Some films are just films. You could watch them on a black and white portable running off a car battery and they would still work. And then some films remind you of everything that's great about going to the cinema. Every scene is a work of art, and Another Earth is one of those. Ruth and I went to see it at the Arc in Stockton last night.
The film starts with a car crash which is ironic because we were nearly run over twice trying to get across the road into the Arc. Somebody called Pam in a Merc tried to run us over in the middle of the green man, but luckily we made it.
When the film started there was one man in front with a squeaky chair who kept moving about, and one lady behind us who seemed to be going for the world record for the noisiest and longest opening of a bar of chocolate in history. Other than that there was only a transfixed silence in the room. There was a mild sex scene later on in the film, and the three middle aged men in front of us, felt it necessary to say something to each other during this, to displace their unease, but other than that, not a sound was heard.
In Contact, when Jodie Foster gets wherever she's going, she says they should have sent a poet. Well, they should have sent one to see Another Earth, because I don't have the words to do it justice.
It's a science fiction story, sort of, but it's not a Hollywood blockbuster. I can't recall anything at all blowing up. A mirror image Planet Earth has been found, where there might be another one of each of us. It was a little bit reminiscent of Moon and Contact, although last night made me regret even more not seeing either of those at the cinema. As for a cinematic experience it was very close to Once. There was no hollywoodisation of the central pair of characters. Failure to Launch it was not.
I've said recently that I don't like films that are like the World Staring Championships, where people just sit around in a room and talk, or don't even talk, they just look out of the window. This film has cured me in one evening of my need to see stuff blown up by men in orange jumpsuits. The placing of some fresh flowers in a vase, the leaving of a toy somewhere, the sweeping of a floor or the scrubbing away of graffiti. All these scenes were just like poetry.
There were parts about sadness and loss and grief, parts about preparing to go on a journey into the unknown, parts about learning to live with disappointment and unfulfilled potential. All life's lessons were in there.
Every scene was magical It's probably one of those films which if I was studying A Levels I would come away from and say how it works on so many levels. But I'm too old now to know about levels, what I do know about are emotions. And it pushed just about every emotional button I've got, and it also left me needing some extra buttons for emotions I didn't even know I could have..
The science wasn't really explained, which was just as well, because two Earths that close together would probably cause some lots of cataclysmic weather disruption and people getting their car tyres and arms melted a la The Core but thankfully there wasn't any feebly cobbled together attempt to explain away the science, like in 2012, where the neutrinos were mutating the planet into oblivion. The science was just left out, and the result was an absolutely gripping human drama.
There are about a hundred separate scenes in the film that you could write a book each about. The constant shots of the earth and the moon, the silence, the moving voiceovers, the changing decor of a girl's bedroom, a game of Wii boxing, a house being gradually tidied up, a chance meeting in a shop with a former school mate, a writing competition, families trying to move on from tragedy. Nothing I could ever say would do it justice. Ruth and I were awake between 3 and 4 this morning discussing all the things in it that just blew us away.
If you can, go and see it. It's probably not showing at the cinema, so when it comes out on DVD, buy it. It won't be as good as at the cinema, but just watch it anyway.
It's another one of those films which are shown at the Arc, which you just wouldn't get to see at the multiplex. We've already seen Jack goes Boating and Sound it Out there this year which were unforgettable. We also saw Deep Blue Sea which drove me mad with its miserable central relationships, 50s wallpaper and grating violin music, but I'd sit through that a hundred times if I had to for the chance to see Another Earth again.
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