Another Earth

Another Earth is a 2011 independent Science Fiction film directed by Mike Cahill and written by Cahill and leading actress Brit Marling. It was distributed by FOX Searchlight Pictures. It is about the discovery of a duplicate of planet Earth and its effects on the lives of two people.

Rhoda Williams is a young woman who has just been accepted in MIT. She has a great future ahead of her, but after celebrating by drinking, she has a car accident when she is distracted by the sight of a planet in the sky that resembles Earth. The struck car belongs to a composer named John Burroughs, and his wife and children die in the crash. He himself is left in a coma.

The vision in the sky isn't an illusion; somehow, a duplicate of Earth, with the same people as well, has appeared near our planet, leading to worldwide shock and interest. But the story focuses on Rhoda's and John's lives. Rhoda spends four years in prison for drunken driving, ruining her life. John recovers but falls into despair. Wracked with guilt, Rhoda finds John, but doesn't tell him who she is. Slowly, they start bonding.

A further twist comes in the way of a contest to earn passage in a spaceship that will visit the Other Earth.

Tropes used in Another Earth include:
  • Alien Sky: Actually, it's Earth's sky with another Earth in it.
  • All the Myriad Ways: The film plays with this.
  • Ambiguous Clone Ending: Rhoda meets herself and the movie ends. Which Rhoda is which? Who visited who? Whose viewpoint are we at? Did one Rhoda have a better life than the other? It's never answered.
  • Artistic License: The film deliberately invokes this in both astronomy and physics. Many scifi fans have complained that the film pushes their Willing Suspension of Disbelief a little too far, however keep in mind that this movie is a drama about grief and not about people running around in terror as the Earth is endangered.[1]
    • Among other things:
      • The other Earth is always portrayed as "full" in the sky during the day (The way the Moon is full), it would have to stay on the night side of Earth to do that unless it was only being viewed at sunrise and sunset.
      • A second planet of Earth-size in our very balanced the solar system really would throw all the other orbits in the inner solar system off.
      • Even if the planet had been hiding behind the sun the whole time before it appeared we would have already been able to infer it from its affect on the other orbits in the inner solar system.
      • If a planet that close were coming that close to Earth people would be more worried about a collision.
      • Ocean tides here on Earth are the result of the moon pulling on the Earth. Another Earth so close as to be bigger than the moon in the sky would send ocean tides over huge swaths of populated land.
      • And if it's that close, our own moon would have crashed into it.
      • Before the radio communication, no one on "our" Earth seemed to have taken notice of (presumably) cities in the same place, for example. That would have tipped onto the almost exact similarity of the two worlds.
  • The Atoner: Rhoda.
  • At the Crossroads: What to do with the ticket.
  • Conspiracy Theorist: Rhoda passes one, complete with sandwich board and tinfoil hat.
  • Convenient Coma: So John can't recognize his family's killer.
  • Conveniently-Close Planet: The other earth, right out there in the sky.
  • Counter-Earth: Sort of.
  • Death by Origin Story: John's family.
  • Heroic BSOD: John has one when Rhoda reveals that she was the one that killed his family.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Wait a second, Ethan Rom is a musician?
  • Hollywood Dateless: Because an attractive young woman like Rhoda must have been working hard to keep a life that far away from social circles. One can only assume that she was asked out from time to time and turned it down.
  • Point of View: Lampshaded in-universe.

John: You think they call us "Earth One"?

  • Self-Harm: We learn Purdeep had blinded himself and during the movie deafened himself.
  • The Reveal: Rhoda's counterpart apparently did have a successful life?
  • Twist Ending
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: We never do find out what the tapping noise was in Rhoda's cosmonaut story.
  • Wonderful Life: Inverted.
  1. ↑ There are plenty of examples of that in fiction already, after all.
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