I’ve been putting it off for several weeks. I’ve had this
movie available, and remembered having heard positive things about this movie
since last year when it was released. It was described as an engaging,
deeply-felt and haunting meditation on life and regret, and it was furthermore
incorporated a science fiction motif. But I’ve been disappointed by these types
of movies before, and in general, Hollywood does not tend to fulfill the
promise of this genre.
The move is called “Another Earth”, and it has a
contemporary setting. The story involves two characters, Rhoda and John, and
their attempt at reconciliation after a painful incident that left both of them
devastated. Both are lonely characters, and both are left bereft, looking to
mend a past and setting their hopes on the possibility of somehow turning the
clock back.
This is not a time travel story such as Stephen King’s
11/22/63, a novel I read recently. It is not a work that relies on technology
as well, to harken back to the critic Eric Rabkin’s idea that science fiction
is a literature of the technological imagination. (A definition that is far too
limited, in my opinion.) This movie is characterized by all manner of mirrors
and reflective devices that reveal a deep preoccupation with the self. These
take all manner of shapes, from windows to water to glass bottles to white snow
and, finally, to the appearance in the sky of another planet, a mirror-image of
the Earth.
This planet, which touts as well its own accompanying moon,
is remarkably similar to our planet. It seems to appear out of the sky
suddenly, and it draws steadily closer until it looms above the sky, a
fascinating facsimile of the Earth as viewed from orbit. The way in which this
object is received, not to mention the physics of such an encounter, are
manifestly impervious to logic.
No worldwide panic seems to ensue. The world, while
fascinated by this encounter, seems to follow normal rhythms, people continue
to work, and there seem to be no major disruptions. The town that serves as the
setting for this story is one of those small places located on the Eastern
coast, surrounded by trees, and the predominant season seems to be either
winter or fall.
One would think, as well, that the approach of such an
enormous object would necessarily result in major physical perturbations on
Earth. Why do the seasons seems not to be disrupted? Why has the orbit of the
Moon not been altered, why are the tides not affected, why are there no
seismological consequences that should necessarily accompany the sudden
proximity of such an enormous gravitational object?
The answer is that this is a movie that is not grounded in
scientific rigor but instead on psychological concerns that have to do with the
fear as well as necessity of self-discovery. The two characters are also
brought together by mysterious circumstances, in this case, the car crash that
is occasioned when a drunk Rhoda, celebrating as she has been her admission to
MIT, kills the family of John Burroughs (yes, Burroughs, a name that can’t help
but resonate with the fantasies of Edgar Rice Burroughs), plunging him into a
four year coma while she finds herself imprisoned in a shiningly white prison
cell.
She approaches him hesitantly after hearing that he has
awoken from his coma. She has now lost the sense of destiny and associated overconfidence
that had characterized her before, having been a young and beautiful and
extraordinarily gifted student. She is consumed by guilt and by what she
perceives is the loss of this bright future, and she ventures out to the
isolated house located in a barren field which is where John resides, mourning
as he is the loss of his family.
Without confessing her intention or identity, she slowly
builds a relationship with him, and helps him to withdraw from his shell. They
discuss the whole exciting idea of contact and discovery, projecting their
hopes as well as fears on this analogue of the Earth that has been dubbed “Earth
2”. They feel like discoverers, and in what is an utterly unlikely scenario
that seems to defy the usual logic but is completely in accord with dreamlike
experiences, they are astounded to find out that this Earth is so much like
their own planet that they even have people who are almost the exact analogues
of themselves. It is an allegory, in other words, couched as a science fiction
fable, in which the protagonist are looking into a mirror and dreaming of
encountering themselves to hopefully find an element of understanding.
If you could talk to yourself, what would you say? Would
your analogue have made the same mistakes that you did? Could you hope to
commune with this person who was and who is not yourself? This is a question
that has been brought to the fore many times, and is part of the whole idea of
the “Many Worlds” hypothesis in which, at each instance, many distinct
realities branch off depending on the many decisions that we make at any
particular moment.
For example, now I am lying on my bed and writing this
review on my laptop. What if I were to stop right here and venture out to the
kitchen for a quick cup of coffee, or step outside for a breath of fresh air,
or stand up and flex my legs? Each of these actions would result, ultimately,
in a different reality the effects of which would be magnified and result in
changes on a grander scale, in accord with the whole idea of the “Butterfly”
effect that was discussed in science fiction stories such as Ray Bradbury’s “A
Sound of Thunder” and, most recently, in the Stephen King novel I mentioned.
Well, in this movie we posit the possibility of encountering
a different line of reality, one that has diverged but only slightly. It may be
that in “Earth 2” Rhoda did not crash into John Burrough’s car, and his loved
ones live, and she has gone on to fulfill the promise of a bright future
instead of having to settle (by her choice, in large part) on a lonely career
as a janitor at a local high school. (Do they allow people with felony
convictions who have served time work in public institutions? I doubt it, but
that is only one of many logical holes in this movie.)
And thus, by a seemingly improbably chain of circumstances,
she wins a trip to this alternate Earth. A private company is paying for a
rocket that it will launch, but after having been informed of her trip, and
after a devastating scene in which she reveals her identity to John, she
decides to pass on to him this chance at traveling to this alternate Earth. Her
hopes are still tied up with the possibility of redemption, and this obsession
is what ties her to her place, punishing herself by accepting her continued
isolation after she has lost John.
This movie is, then, an allegory for encounters both with
the self as well as with destiny. Why should the planet have been detected on
that wild night in which she was celebrating the virtual certainty of a
promising career? What is it if not a projection, one that is rooted in a
deep-seated guilt as well as a reflection on the seeming randomness of life
that can frustrate this sense of purpose and bring her life to a standstill? It
is an attempt to find meaning, and in the end, in that final encounter with her
alternate self who appears suddenly, we are left similarly breathless as we
reflect on how we, ourselves, also harbor a myriad number of selves within us,
who look out and who reflect on our actions and on life in general. We are none
of us as consistent and unitary as we might have believed. (But Freud showed us
that almost 100 years ago.) We all have within us complete solar systems,
worlds to be explored, with discoveries both frightening as well as
exhilarating.
Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013
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