15 Years Later, Another Earth Still Offers A Clever Twist On The Parallel Universe

We’ve been speculating about extraterrestrial life for nearly as long as we’ve been studying the stars, so it would certainly be convenient if proof suddenly appeared out of thin air. When this happens in a movie, it’s usually dramatic and definitive — aliens appear to conquer us, or work with us, or maybe just seek our help getting home. But every now and then, science fiction uses alien life to further muddy the waters and question our assumptions about our little place in the cosmos.

That’s certainly the case in Another Earth, which was released 15 years ago today and sees the sudden and dramatic appearance of a second Earth-like planet within cosmic spitting distance. Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling, more recently the co-creator, co-writer, and co-star of A Murder at the End of the World) is as interested in this revelation as anyone would be, but she soon has bigger issues. Moments after the existence of Earth 2 is announced, the 17-year-old, intoxicated after celebrating her acceptance to MIT at a grad party, slams her car into another vehicle, putting its driver in a coma and murdering his wife and young son.

When Rhoda is released from prison four years later, it’s been clarified that Earth 2 is literally what the title says it is, right down to having an exact copy of everyone on Earth 1. There’s no complicated parallel universe or time-travel trickery afoot here, and while not a knock against it, you should know going in that Another Earth is barely a science fiction movie. People are certainly moved by the revelation of Earth 2, but it’s background noise for much of the runtime, part of the sci-fi tradition that suggests world-altering events wouldn’t really change our daily priorities.

Rhoda, however, is intrigued enough — and guilt-ridden enough — to consider entering an essay contest for a seat on a private space company’s expedition to Earth 2. And when she’s not contemplating her submission or working as a janitor at her old high school, she’s ingratiating herself with John Burroughs (William Mapother), who’s recently come out of his coma and is too busy drinking himself into a stupor to notice the odd behavior of the young cleaning lady who showed up out of the blue with the offer of a free trial.

Like a mumblecore Solaris or somber Sliding Doors, Another Earth is about the seemingly mundane decisions that add up to the lives we lead, and hint at all the ones we don’t. Unlike us, though, Rhoda and John have to see a reminder of their poor decisions and bad breaks literally hang in the sky. At first, when a scientist on Earth 1 contacts her counterpart on Earth 2, it seems there’s no escaping our fate. But after another scientist suggests that the two Earths veered off into separate timelines the moment they became visible to each other, Rhoda sees a way out of the purgatory she’s trapped herself in.

Filmed on a minute $100,000 budget, the image of a looming second Earth is a simple but effective illusion that inspires awe, envy, and dread. Knowing that there’s not only another you out there, but that they may have made better decisions, would be enough to drive even the most stoic of us up a wall. It can be difficult to think of our lives as special and meaningful at the best of times, and now we’re showing ourselves up? It’s no wonder that, in a small but clever touch, Rhoda encounters a man espousing a conspiracy theory that Earth 1 is merely an immaterial illusion produced by its twin.

Largely a two-hander between Marling and Mapother, the former stands out as a shell-shocked young woman stuck going through the motions of a life she never envisioned. When she finally submits her essay to knockoff Blue Origin, it opens with the tired clichés of the high school student she was, but evolves into the more measured observations of the adult she’s begrudgingly becoming. It’s an effective bit of writing, and Marling’s narration is a highlight of a performance that walks the tightrope between understated and expressionless. As Rhoda grows to realize, it doesn’t matter how many other realities are out there; we can only play the cards in front of us, and we only get infuriatingly brief glimpses at what might be lurking in the deck.

Another Earth is streaming on Prime Video.