Living in a Different World, Searching for a Second Chance

At one point in “Another Earth,” a coming-of-adulthood story that improbably blends a plaintive drama with romantic longing and far-out science fiction, a young woman, Rhoda (Brit Marling), apprehensively moves through her old room in her family’s home as if she were a stranger. Once a bright 17-year-old bound for M.I.T., she had taken a calamitous turn while drinking and driving, a detour that sent her to prison. Booze, youth and stupidity led to the accident, as did her distracting long look at a newly discovered planet, the blue marble twin of our own that gives the movie its metaphorically resonant title.

our years later, surrounded by tokens of a former life, including a mobile of the planets, Rhoda lingers in her childhood room surrounded by grid wallpaper, a reminder of her formerly orderly life and perhaps too a nod to SETI, or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Grid, or distributed computing, is what powers SETI@home, an initiative that creates a virtual supercomputer from participating idle computers all over the world that together analyze data for SETI projects. The SETI connection also explains why the filmmakers tapped the astrophysicist Dr. Richard Berendzen (the author of “Pulp Physics”) to provide the mellifluous voice-over that wends through the movie, provocatively speculating on life beyond our planetary horizons, while Rhoda walks alone in a world in which she has become a near alien.

A story about second chances, parallel lives (on and nearly off the grid) and making the creative most from a modest production budget and low-res digital cinematography, “Another Earth” was directed by Mike Cahill from his script with Ms. Marling. Modestly scaled and quiet, it largely unwinds after Rhoda’s release from prison. Withdrawn, seemingly friendless, she moves back in with her mother, father and brother, who flutter around her with hopeful smiles. She sets up a new bedroom in the attic, moving her further away from her family and closer to the stars, and takes a job as a janitor at a high school, where she tucks her braid under a cap and pushes a mop alongside a gnomic old man, Purdeep (Kumar Pallana).

Although Purdeep’s name sounds too on the nose, and he’s more of a conceit than a character, despite Mr. Pallana’s sympathetic presence, the old man gives Rhoda a necessary touch of warmth. Often silent, with wide, startled eyes, she begins as a mystery that the filmmakers don’t rush to solve. Tragedy and no doubt prison have stunted her, leaving her in effective lockdown. She starts opening up, as do her personality and the story, after she approaches John Burroughs (William Mapother), a musician whose life she nearly ended and all but ruined when she plowed her car into his, killing his wife and young son. Living a life of near total isolation, John invites her into his home without knowing that she was the under-age offender.

In time a relationship between them develops that’s emotionally believable and almost too contrived to work. That it does is mainly because of the leads, given plenty of room by Mr. Cahill, and because of characters who are revealed to us at the same time that they discover each other. Mr. Mapother, familiar from “In the Bedroom,” among other films, and Ms. Marling, a relative newcomer, make an appropriately awkward fit at first. Accustomed to living inside their heads instead of with other people, their characters are initially physically awkward around each other. They’re given to abrupt, hesitant gestures and lurching movements, as if they had forgotten how to take up space with other human beings. Talking is even harder.

Scene by scene, though, their blurting builds into sentences and gradually entire conversations. Strangers become intimates as their lives and the narrative gently turn and twist. For Rhoda existence appears nearly unbearable, which fuels both her home invasion — she tells John she works for a cleaning service — and her mounting preoccupation with the strange planet. The other Earth that hovers and sometimes looms above Rhoda like a promise may be the stuff of science fiction. But the idea that there’s another, better life someplace else — on the other side, down the road, up in space, inside our heads or in the embrace of another person — is the very human conviction that keeps things looking up and down to earth.

“Another Earth” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). A violent crash and some gentle lovemaking.

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