Q&A with MIKE CAHILL: "We have a primal fear of being alone in the universe. That's why we reach out."

A.D. Amorosi takes a trip to Another Earth with director Mike Cahill.

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Q&A with MIKE CAHILL: "We have a primal fear of being alone in the universe. That’s why we reach out."

POSTED: Friday, July 29, 2011, 4:30 PM

Filed Under: Interview | Movies

Brit Marling and Mike Cahill at the Sofitel Hotel in Philadelphia, July 8. (Scott Weiner)

Another Earth starts and leaves its viewers with one haunting question: If there were a mirror Earth, what would it mean? Could lost loved ones be there? Could you wipe away the stains of your crimes and sins? Would you like your mirror-self? And what sacrifice would you be willing to make to be on that other version of Earth?

Director/writer Mike Cahill and star/writer/co-producer Brit Marling probed these questions in their film, in which Marling plays a girl who leads a charmed life — including having just been accepted into MIT. But then she strikes a sedan and kills the family in it (all but one member). After being imprisoned for four years, feeling worthless and working menial jobs, she seeks out the once-comatose widower of the deceased family, a classical composer played by William Mapother. While she grows close to the widower without him knowing who she is, she enters and wins an essay contest where the prize is a trip to Another Earth.

To tell you more would be cruel. But to let Cahill do it is a joy.

City Paper: How does a guy with such a deep résumé of music documentaries (Sting, Leonard Cohen) start thinking about Another Earth?
Mike Cahill: When I was still studying at Georgetown, I was making a lot of shorts — fictional films starring Brit, who was like four years younger than me. So we had this collaborative background in fiction, kids telling stories. When I graduated, I started working for National Geographic and started on real authentic stories, like the music docs. But I always wanted Brit and I to go back to our roots. Documentaries give you a confidence in regard to walking into a scene. You so often have to capture the unpredictable. Add an extra amount of control and your meter for authenticity goes up — that’s your barometer. So I approached Another Earth as if it were a documentary, taking a story that is science fiction but grounding it in reality.

CP: The film definitely has that feel. What visual twist did you wish to lend Another Earth to make it adaptable to fiction?
MC: I always thought it was be interesting if the camera from Dogma 95, the stripped-down, bare, naturalistic thing, caught that other Earth in the sky. District 9 in its intent, more modest in its budget. If it felt real in its look and its technique, we could make it feel real. There are cues and syntax that an audience understands. Magic realism, if you will; heavy-handed, even.

CP: You took the words out of my mouth. Talk about the emotionalism of second chances and how you married that with science.
MC: We as humans have a primal sort of fear of being alone, alone in the universe. That’s why we reach out. We don’t want to be the only ones here. That’s just a microcosm. Humans have a singular perspective. No matter how people are around us, there’s intense loneliness. That emotion — that’s captured in The Double Life of Veronique, the cultural notion of doppelgangers — a soul mate, is part of the subconscious. We made a twist on that by saying that there is another one of each and every one of all of us, 3 billion of us. Think about that complication, externalizing that interior process. That emotion bled into the science and the fiction of it.

CP: Who came up with the idea that such emotion and such questions should be motivated by a crime?
MC: We came up with the large concept — that other Earth — first, then worked backward. Billions of stories. What can we tell? Narcissism. Falling in love with yourself. Self-loathing. We came up with the notion of, who [would] most want to meet themselves? One with a hard time forgiving themself. Perhaps the other you will absolve you, will free you from the guilt. So we worked backward and made a redemption story.

CP: Is the other Earth an analogy for some brand of purgatory or heaven?
MC: For sure, there is that notion, an undercurrent. One takes their sources from everywhere. There was a definitely this feeling of Judgment Day and coming face to face with yourself and how you will react when your life is looked at objectively. There’s definitely an element in there — there’s even a passage from the Bible. “For now we see through a mirror darkly, but soon we will see face to face.” It’s about a way of evading the loneliness of life.

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