Another Earth
As a successful Georgetown economics grad with her career mapped out before her, Brit Marling decided to change the course of her life. Goldman Sachs’ loss became the movie world’s gain, as she followed her passion for producing, writing and acting.
She first gained note for co-writing and directing Boxers and Ballerinas with Mike Cahill, the noted documentary that followed the lives of a boxer and ballerina in Havana, Cuba, contrasting their lives with those of a boxer and ballerina 90 miles away in Miami, Florida, winning awards at both the Breckenridge and Cinequest Jose film festivals.
With her sights set on a full-length feature, she and Cahill started work on the ambitious Another Earth, a genre-breaking melodramatic romantic sci-fi hybrid filmed on a shoestring budget.
Twenty-eight-year-old Brit both stars in and co-wrote the film and it went on to take the prestigious Alfred P Sloan prize for outstanding film with science, technology or math as a major theme at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
- Another Earth is very much a piece of work that spans multiple genres: how would you most simply describe it?
At its core it’s the story of a young girl and a man whose lives become intertwined the night of this terrible accident she causes, and that night is also the night of the discovery of another planet in our solar system, which turns out to be a duplicate Earth.
I play Rhoda Williams, the young girl who causes this accident, and in the story she’s imprisoned for four years. When she comes out on the other side, this planet has come even closer, and the possibility of contact and communication is now being discussed.
- You co-wrote the movie - what brought you to these themes?
We were listening to Dr. Richard Berenson on tape. Dr. Berenson is the narrator of the film and has that booming voice that feels like an all-knowing, omniscient figure. He has all these books about the cosmos on tape.
He also has a wonderful way of talking about space because he’s a master storyteller, so it all comes with a sense of history and character and narrative, and poetics almost. I think that that got both Mike [Cahill, director and co-writer] and me thinking; ‘why have we become so disconnected with that wonder?’
We live in these cities where you’re really disconnected from the night sky; you don’t spend the night under the stars daydreaming on your relative insignificance in comparison to all that is so unknown. He awakened that sense in us and we wanted to try to make a movie that had some of that feeling.
- With the personal drama and the sci-fi angle, it’s an interesting mix of genres: do you have a name for it?
Yes! Mike and I talk about this as a sci-fi romantic thriller, mixing together science fiction, a little love story and throwing in a thriller feeling to it too.
There’s a lot going on there, kind of like a Venn diagram, and we’re somewhere in the middle of all that history of storytelling.
- Speaking of the history of storytelling, what were your main influences when putting it together?
Kieslowski is a huge influence for both Mike and me: The Decalogue, Red, Blue... The Double Life of Veronique even deals with a doppelganger. I think he has an amazing way of talking about the unknown because he never tries to look directly at it.
Talking about metaphysical things or the universe is like looking into the sun; you’re blinded by it and you can’t see it, but if you look slightly to the periphery you may catch some of the mystery of it.
He really inspired both of us, this idea of using micro story telling, things that are very human between two people but trying to point to a larger mystery.
- You were very inexperienced when you started making it - what made you think you could do it, and how did you have the audacity to even try it?
Oh my gosh, that’s so true - the audacity. I don’t know. You’re so brash in your youth and your ignorance is your bliss.
I had sort of lived the backup plan first: I had studied economics at Georgetown, had interned at Goldman and Sachs, so I had looked at that version of life. It left something to be desired so I decided I was going to be an actor.
I was going to be that or it was not going to be anything, like ‘I’ll just be a traveler and travel the world and sell grapefruits on the side of the road instead.’
Somebody important once said something like, ‘If you don’t feel you must write, then you should do something else’ because it’s so hard, there’s so much self doubt, and you’re so on your own.
- It’s also said that you should never have a Plan B, and that’s the only way you can achieve your dreams. Do you believe that’s true?
That’s totally true. You are burning bridges, and there’s an obsession with that in Another Earth too.
This idea that as you’re making choices, you’re getting farther and farther away from one version of yourself, and you’re entering more into another and you can’t go back. Every choice you make you’re divorcing the vision of who you could’ve been and arriving at something else.
- Did you have any thoughts of what might happen had this not taken off?
Oh wow, I really haven’t thought about that. I’m on my knees before the programmers of Sundance. Independent cinema really matters to them and they’re trying to program outsider voices.
Outside of that everyone is so afraid of taking risks, so afraid of the unknown, and with Sundance this group of programmers are measuring the work just by how much they’re moved, not by how much is it made for.
- What’s happened with Another Earth is really the indie filmmaker’s dream. What do you think is in this movie that appealed to Sundance, and now to the public?
That is a really good question. I have to tell you I was completely shocked that the film got into Sundance and even more shocked by the responses at the screening.
We thought we made something that might’ve made people wonder, that would provoke a sense of wonder for the cosmos again, but I don’t think you ever know that you’ve made something that can move people until it does. And then you think: ‘we just got lucky.’
- How did your journey start? You said you’d trained in economics - did you take any acting or writing classes?
No, not at Georgetown. I was doing photography and making little short films, and that’s how I met Mike. Zal Batmanglij and he made a film together that wasn’t like anything else - certainly not student filmmaking.
These were two artists who thankfully were coming of age at a time when the technology was there for them to pick up the cameras and just make things. I was tremendously lucky as an actor to meet with two collaborators who I hope
I will spend the rest of my life getting to collaborate with.
- You mention how the technology helped make the process possible: what was it like from a practical standpoint?
I can tell you a story that I think will sum it up. We separated the producing into ‘on the grid’ and ‘off the grid’, and ‘on the grid’ filmmaking used more apparatus: lighting, sound and a proper schedule of what was going to be shot that day.
‘Off the grid’ Mike and me, in a car; he had the camera, I was the actor, just shooting stuff. Part of the ‘off the grid’ filmmaking was Rhoda’s release from prison shot. Of course we couldn’t afford a prison but we found one that we could get close enough to the front of and Mike parked across the street.
I just put on my costume in the passenger seat, grabbed a yoga mat, walked across the street and went into the prison. I said, ‘Hi, I’m here to teach yoga,’ and acted as if I did this all the time.
While they were figuring it out I just dropped the yoga mat, turned around and walked out while Mike was shooting it, and that is the release from prison shot that ended up in the film. So much of the movie was made that way - everything for free. Mike’s mom’s house was Rhoda’s house; Mike’s mom’s car was one of the cars in the movie; Mike’s mom was in the movie; a friend gave us a camera...
- What was the actual budget for this film?
Probably more than Once, but maybe less than Inception.
- For you, it’s a fairly vanity-free performance - you’re pretty bedraggled for much of it. Any concerns about being seen that way?
Oh no. The best part of being an actor is changing yourself from the inside and outside, really losing track of who you are. I think in moments where that actually happens it feels a bit like time travel.
You lose the sense of a future and a past. The janitor uniform... putting on those boots changes the way you walk, you start to move more androgynously, less femininely and less gracefully. All those things help you stay in the illusion you created.
- You’ve said the movie starts with the central question 'What kind of people most need to encounter themselves?' Did you find an answer?
That’s interesting. I think the truth is that in the time we are experiencing right now, everybody could use a bit of self-confrontation. The world needs to look at itself - everybody’s very boxed in.
We’re like thoroughbred racehorses with the blinders on, and we’re running around the track with no idea what we’re actually doing or what any of it means. Another Earth is a metaphor that way. It holds the mirror up to who we are as people, who we are as a culture, where we are in the world.
- If you did encounter yourself on an alternative version of Earth, what would you ask yourself?
If I met Brit on another Earth and she was obviously very different than I am, I’d be madly curious to know what choices she had made that led her to such a different place.
And if I met myself as I am now and I was in a pink dress with my hair is all spruced up, I’d hope whatever I was doing, that I was doing it courageously.
- Are you ready for a period in your life that may involve more sprucing? How do you think life is going to change from this point on?
I think it changes but the fundamentals stay the same. There’s a lot of noise around a movie entering the world and it’s important because it’s how you connect with people, but at the end of the day it’s still about the next work that you do, and how are you going to be more authentic and more honest.
How are you going to write something that has something to say that gives a real insight into what it means to be human? At the end of the day it’s still the cursor flashing at you on the screen.
Aother Earth is released 9th December
As a successful Georgetown economics grad with her career mapped out before her, Brit Marling decided to change the course of her life. Goldman Sachs’ loss became the movie world’s gain, as she followed her passion for producing, writing and acting.
She first gained note for co-writing and directing Boxers and Ballerinas with Mike Cahill, the noted documentary that followed the lives of a boxer and ballerina in Havana, Cuba, contrasting their lives with those of a boxer and ballerina 90 miles away in Miami, Florida, winning awards at both the Breckenridge and Cinequest Jose film festivals.
With her sights set on a full-length feature, she and Cahill started work on the ambitious Another Earth, a genre-breaking melodramatic romantic sci-fi hybrid filmed on a shoestring budget.
Twenty-eight-year-old Brit both stars in and co-wrote the film and it went on to take the prestigious Alfred P Sloan prize for outstanding film with science, technology or math as a major theme at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
- Another Earth is very much a piece of work that spans multiple genres: how would you most simply describe it?
At its core it’s the story of a young girl and a man whose lives become intertwined the night of this terrible accident she causes, and that night is also the night of the discovery of another planet in our solar system, which turns out to be a duplicate Earth.
I play Rhoda Williams, the young girl who causes this accident, and in the story she’s imprisoned for four years. When she comes out on the other side, this planet has come even closer, and the possibility of contact and communication is now being discussed.
- You co-wrote the movie - what brought you to these themes?
We were listening to Dr. Richard Berenson on tape. Dr. Berenson is the narrator of the film and has that booming voice that feels like an all-knowing, omniscient figure. He has all these books about the cosmos on tape.
He also has a wonderful way of talking about space because he’s a master storyteller, so it all comes with a sense of history and character and narrative, and poetics almost. I think that that got both Mike [Cahill, director and co-writer] and me thinking; ‘why have we become so disconnected with that wonder?’
We live in these cities where you’re really disconnected from the night sky; you don’t spend the night under the stars daydreaming on your relative insignificance in comparison to all that is so unknown. He awakened that sense in us and we wanted to try to make a movie that had some of that feeling.
- With the personal drama and the sci-fi angle, it’s an interesting mix of genres: do you have a name for it?
Yes! Mike and I talk about this as a sci-fi romantic thriller, mixing together science fiction, a little love story and throwing in a thriller feeling to it too.
There’s a lot going on there, kind of like a Venn diagram, and we’re somewhere in the middle of all that history of storytelling.
- Speaking of the history of storytelling, what were your main influences when putting it together?
Kieslowski is a huge influence for both Mike and me: The Decalogue, Red, Blue... The Double Life of Veronique even deals with a doppelganger. I think he has an amazing way of talking about the unknown because he never tries to look directly at it.
Talking about metaphysical things or the universe is like looking into the sun; you’re blinded by it and you can’t see it, but if you look slightly to the periphery you may catch some of the mystery of it.
He really inspired both of us, this idea of using micro story telling, things that are very human between two people but trying to point to a larger mystery.
- You were very inexperienced when you started making it - what made you think you could do it, and how did you have the audacity to even try it?
Oh my gosh, that’s so true - the audacity. I don’t know. You’re so brash in your youth and your ignorance is your bliss.