Mike Cahill

The bored and boring Greg Wittle has visions of another world. These visions cause him to loose his job. When he tries to drown his misery in the local pub, Wittle is approached by Isabel (Salma Hayek) who appears to know a lot about him.

A bit like in the first Matrix film, Wittle learns that the world that he is used to is not the real world, and Isabel teaches him to manipulate his surroundings and eventually, they go to the actual ‘real world’.

Needless to say, the film plays with the question which world actually is the real one. With no real surprises the idea is tossed back and forth and a bit of a tragic romance story unfolds.

I thought this would be a scifi, but “Another Earth” is actually a fairly heavy drama. The film has more incommon with “Sound Of My Voice” then with Cahill’s “I Origins“, but there certainly are similarities.

For starters, Brit Marling plays main parts in all three films. Second, all three films have a bit of a spiritual undertone. Both “Another Earth” and “Sound Of My Voice” are dramas with a scifi theme. In the latter title the main character supposedly comes from the future, in the present title scientists find a nearby planet that appears to be a mirrored version of our earth.

The story -though- is more about Rhoda (played by Marling) who drives into a family car driving home from a party. The story picks up when Rhoda comes out of jail after four years and she tries to find the father of the family who survived after having been in a coma. The two meet and of course the unexpected happens.

Parallel to the main story there is the story of the carbon copied earth. Of course everybody is intrigued by the idea that there is another version of him-/herself and what that would imply. When a party is sought to out visit the planet, Rhoda applies, since nobody would miss here on this earth anyway.

Like the other two titles mentioned “Another Earth” has an original story, a nice idea, but not worked out into a very convincing film.