Viewing - Another Earth - a film by Mike Cahill

  16 August 2012 This independent film won a prize at Sundance 2011. I enjoyed it. Right from the start, the director uses images and diegetic sound to narrate. There is very little dialogue at the start but the story builds as the two principal characters lives cross against the background of the discovery of a duplicate earth; with tragic results. I think this a very interesting film because of the way the story is told. It is very low budget so the director has used the locations provided by friends in the area of Connecticut . Despite this, the story unfolds dramatically and has the feeling of a well crafted narrative showing the interaction between a lonely girl who has tragically and negligently killed a mother and child in a traffic accident. After spending four years in jail, her clumsy attempts at redemption by contacting John, the grieving father, her weakness in being unable to admit to him who she is, all build the tension towards the climax of the film where Rhoda meets herself after the two Earths send travellers to each others planets. At this point the film ends, leaving the viewer to contemplate the nature of the possibility of parallel existences. Tragedy, love and a sort of resolution has been found. John taking Rhoda's place on the exchange flight to seek his wife and son on the new planet and the other Rhoda arriving on Earth indicate that at the point at which the two planets recognise each other's existence, the parallel nature of their existence ends. The debate about the nature of the universe and existence will continue.