In Theaters: July 2011
DVD Release: November 2011
Starring: William Mapother and Brit Marling
Directed by: Mike Cahill
Genre: Science Fiction
Warnings: This movie probably will bore your junior high students. If you have a college/young adult group and a few hours, this is a very deep contemplative sci-fi film without a single light-saber battle or spaceship.
This is an extremely odd film. It’s like watching two hours of paint dry, then having someone smack you upside the head with a shovel in the very last second of the film.
The story revolves around a bright young graduate named Rhoda. Rhoda has everything going for her. She just graduated high school. She has a full ride scholarship. She is on her way. On the eve of her graduation, she has too much to drink, gets behind the wheel of her car and promptly plows into a mini-van, killing a mother, her child and leaving the father in a coma. She is sent to a juvenile facility and released when she is 21. (All of this happens in the first three minutes of the film.)
Rhoda gets out of jail and goes to work as a janitor at her old high school. She is deeply despondent and decides she must find a way to apologize to the father whose life she destroyed.
Now, let’s back up…on the night of the car accident, Rhoda was distracted by a huge blue light in the sky. This light turns out to be another earth in what we imagine is a parallel dimension.
These two earths were existing side by side with exact histories, mirror images of each other. The moment these two earths became aware of each other in the night sky, those mirror images changed so that each earth has it’s own timeline, it’s own path.
Rhoda begins to wonder if the Rhoda on the other earth had a different life. Did the other Rhoda cause an accident and ruin a man’s life? Did the other Rhoda go to college?
An independent billionaire decides to mount a space expedition to visit the other earth offering an essay contest. The winner, an average citizen, will be granted a chance to fly in the ship to the other earth.
Meanwhile, Rhoda not only has found the father whose life she trashed, but has become his friend while telling him nothing of their hidden connection.
Rhoda enters the contest and wins the golden ticket to board the flight.
At this point, I’m going to let you watch. If you are leading a group, you will be a much more effective leader if you are as stunned as the makers intended viewers to be. Remember this is not a movie for younger youth, and you can’t show this movie in clips. It is one of those rare films in which the entire movie builds to a singular moment.
Seriously, the movie is 92 minutes long and at the 91:58 mark, you won’t see what’s coming until it punches you in the gut.
The movie is PG-13 for some language issues, brief nudity and sexuality.
Discussion Options:
Be ready with the creation story from Genesis. Read the story before you begin the movie. Use it as a prayer just before you press play.
Also,
