Another Earth - DVD Review

'Brit Marling in the lead is tremendous, slowly growing Rhoda from silent, anonymous, shell to sometimes talkative charmer, as the character grows into her new reality and adjusts to building a life out of nothing'

A low-budget Sci-Fi with 'ideas', Another Earth can easily be compared to similar indie offerings Moon and Monsters. Like those films, Mike Cahill's might exist in a World where space travel is talked about frequently and where, more significantly, a duplicate of our planet has just appeared off our bow, but these things happen in the background, context for the quietly plotted action taking up much of the focus.

That action revolves around co-writer Brit Marling's Rhoda who, on the eve of the new planet's discovery, ruins her life and those of others involved in a terrible accident. The scene is set for musings on lives lost and things that 'could have been'. A character late in the day tells Rhoda that he was once told he would either be a millionaire or go straight to jail. Thoughts of the thin line between the two possibles are never far away and, like Duncan Jones' and Gareth Edwards' films before it, Another Earth excels mainly because it is a film unconcerned with blowing things up and more concerned with plot, dialogue and character.

Marling in the lead is tremendous, slowly growing Rhoda from silent, anonymous, shell to sometimes talkative charmer, as the character grows into her new reality and adjusts to building a life out of nothing. The Rhoda at the end is unrecognisable from the Rhoda in the moments after the start, which is exactly as it should be. Co-star William Mapother is fine but wobbles in to over-acting occasionally whilst the rest of the supporting cast (Kumar Pallana excluded) start to distract whenever they're on screen, failing to live up to the two leads.

Cahill's style too is sometimes too busy for its own good, following obvious conceptual tropes rather than letting the film do its own talking. As Rhoda listens to a TV burble on about 'what were you doing the night the planet was found?', he zooms in suddenly to her face, an accentuation of a point that didn't need to be made. A little later there is a three-way scene progression, from Rhoda being told that working in a school 'must be therapeutic', to Rhoda doing that work and clearly gaining some sort of release, to Rhoda doing a more significant action which is truly therapeutic, beyond the fake distraction of the school. This progression happens often and the more obvious manifestations of it - like mini visual poems - start to look a bit film-studenty, pleasantly conceived though they are.

All that said, it would be unfair to place Cahill's film amongst such lofty contemporary efforts and then suggest it doesn't live up to them. Another Earth is a very good film, littered with great scripting and a solid grasp - like Jones and Edwards - of how Sci-Fi can be used on a budget to tell a touching story. The finale brings the ideas about redemption, second chances and dual lives together and presents them in an unforgettable final shot, solidifying Cahill's effort amongst the contemporary greats of the genre.