"Another Earth" Movie Review

"Another Earth" movie poster.

"On the night of the discovery of a duplicate planet in the solar system, an ambitious young student (Brit Marling) and an accomplished composer (William Mapother) cross paths in a tragic accident." (Link below.)

This was certainly a very interesting film. I would never have been able to come up with something like that. Another whole planet with my exact likeness on it, perhaps with a completely different life than mine.... almost too much for me to understand. Very exciting that Brit Marling, who starred in it and did a great job, also cowrote it with the director, Mike Cahill.

I thought it was beautifully filmed and the music was wonderful. There is even a scene where an actor plays a saw (the kind you use to cut wood) like an instrument which I have never seen before nor heard before.

I would've liked to have seen more science geek stuff like tides and gravity effected by the proximity of the earth being so close to another earth but that wasn't really the story here and I can understand why they would want to skip that.

"Another Earth" movie poster featuring Brit Marling.

I don't want to talk about the ending except to say that it is bittersweet and surprising. I very much enjoyed watching this film and hope there is more like it.

Favorite Lines:

Richard Berendzen: In the grand history of the cosmos, more than thirteen thousand million years old, our Earth is replicated elsewhere. But maybe there is another way of seeing this world. If any small variation arises-they look this way, you look that way-suddenly maybe everything changes and now you begin to wonder, what else is different? Well, one might say that you have an exact mirror image that is suddenly shattered and there's a new reality. And therein lies the opportunity and the mystery. What else? What new? What now?

Rhoda Williams: When early explorers first set out West across the Atlantic, most people thought the world was flat. Most people thought if you sailed far enough West, you would drop off a plane into nothing. Those vessels sailing out into the unknown, they weren't carrying noblemen or aristocrats, artists or merchants. They were crewed by people living on the edge of life: the madmen, orphans, ex-convicts, outcasts like myself. As a felon, I'm an unlikely candidate for most things. But perhaps not for this. Perhaps I am the most likely.

Beautiful image from the movie "Another Earth".

Rhoda Williams: You know that story of the Russian cosmonaut? So, the cosmonaut, He's the first man ever to go into space. Right? The Russians beat the Americans. So he goes up in this big spaceship, but the only habitable part of it's very small. So the cosmonaut's in there, and he's got this portal window, and he's looking out of it, and he sees the curvature of the Earth for the first time. I mean, the first man to ever look at the planet he's from. And he's lost in that moment. And all of a sudden this strange ticking... Begins coming out of the dashboard. Rips out the control panel, right? Takes out his tools. Trying to find the sound, trying to stop the sound. But he can't find it. He can't stop it. It keeps going. Few hours into this, begins to feel like torture. A few days go by with this sound, and he knows that this small sound... will break him. He'll lose his mind. What's he gonna do? He's up in space, alone, in a space closet. He's got 25 days left to go... with this sound. So the cosmonaut decides... the only way to save his sanity... is to fall in love with this sound. So he closes his eyes... and he goes into his imagination, and then he opens them. He doesn't hear ticking anymore. He hears music. And he spends the rest of the voyage sailing through space in total bliss... and peace.

Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1549572/.

"A Dangerous Method" Movie Review

"A Dangerous Method" movie poster.

"Suffering from hysteria, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) is hospitalized under the care of Dr. Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) who has begun using Dr. Sigmund Freud's (Viggo Mortensen) talking cure with some of his patients. Spielrain's psychological problems are deeply rooted in her childhood and violent father. She is highly intelligent however and hopes to be a doctor, eventually becoming a psychiatrist in her own right. The married Jung and Spielrein eventually become lovers. Jung and Freud develop an almost father-son relationship with Freud seeing the young Jung as his likely successor as the standard-bearer of his beliefs. A deep rift develops between them when Jung diverges from Freud's belief that while psychoanalysis can reveal the cause of psychological problems it cannot cure the patient." Written by garykmcd (Link below.)

Keira Knightley (L) and Michael Fassbender.

An absolutely brilliant movie about not two, but three brilliant minds of the psycho-analytical world, Sabina Spielrein, played by Keira Knightly, Sigmund Freud, played by Viggo Mortensen, and Carl Jung, played by Michael Fassbender. It was quite fun to watch Mr. Mortensen act like Freud, although I can't entirely explain why.

There is something that was a bit absent during the movie, but it's a good thing. Freud and Jung had many discussions together concerning the interpretation of their dreams and analysis of their patients (in particular, Spielrein) but they didn't discuss it overmuch. I know a few people (psychologist majors and alike) who don't usually walk into a movie theatre expecting to learn things, might, for some idiotic reason, think that will be different in the case of this movie. I didn't really learn more than what was already floating around in the ether of common knowledge these days. But I did learn that Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were not immune to life and its issues, like jealousy, prejudice or submitting to a forbidden relationship.

The only thing that I had a problem with the movie was the stupid tagline they put on the poster: "Based on the true story of Jung, Freud and the patient that came between them." That's not exactly what happened, if anything she tries to patch things up between them. And the tagline also makes one think that (if one does not know the story of Freud and Jung) that they had both slept with her and it caused a rift between them. No, it was all their own fault. They couldn't get over certain ideas, so they ignored each other like they ignored those ideas.

Viggo Mortensen.

Overall, I enjoyed it and thought the performances were all phenomenal. I think they all should've gotten nominated, like Viggo Mortensen has said. The only person I didn't like was Vincent Cassel and that's because his character was a despicable person aptly named Otto Gross. The only actor I thought wasn't performing was Sarah Gadon who played Jung's wife, Emma Jung. Was their relationship really that unpassionate? I'm ill-informed about these people so I can't really judge her performance alongside Mr. Fassbender, but she also seemed unfeeling and aloof as far as her family was concerned as well. I know back then they didn't show their feelings or affection as much as people do now, but even in the privacy of her own home she seemed very distant from everything. I just don't know enough to say for sure.

Also, a side note: I imagine doctors having illicit affairs with their patients probably wasn't as improbable as they make it seem in the film, although very damaging to a career if you want to be taken seriously. It probably happened a lot and still does to a certain degree.

Script available here: http://www.sonyclassics.com/awards-information/screenplays/adangerousmethod_screenplay.pdf.

Favorite Lines:

Sabina Spielrein: [to Jung] I want you to punish me. 

Carl Jung: Sometimes you have to do something unforgivable... just to be able to go on living. 

Sigmund Freud: Experiences like this, however painful, are necessary and inevitable; without them, how can we know life? 

Otto Gross: It seems to me the measure of the true perversity of the human race, that one of its very few reliably pleasurable activities should be the subject of so much hysteria and repression. 

Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1571222/