The Brother from Another Planet

source: The Brother from Another Planet

I really enjoyed this film. It is a good example of dialogue over action within a story. The main character does not have any dialogue, but the film is carried so well by the supporting cast that we begin to learn about the main character as much as the supporting cast. Sayles did a great job on this film for a respectable low budget film (some might even say a B film). A good film to watch... It is also a good film for most any screenwriter to study. Screenplays are essentially dialogue and action. That is to say that a reading (or spec) screenplay is set up that way. Dialogue is the vehicle that drives the story, and this film demonstrates that point very well. The idea that the main character has no dialogue is complemented by the dialogue of the supporting cast in intelligent ways.

An alien (Joe Morton) lands in NYC. At first, he's outwardly a black man missing a leg. He's mute, has the ability to heal, fix machines, takes out his eye, reads minds and super athletic. He grows a leg. He befriends a group at a local bar in a black neighborhood. He is being pursued by two mysterious Man in Black (David Strathairn, John Sayles). It's a really interesting concept to do a low budget indie of a friendly alien finding his way in a minority neighborhood of a modern city. It starts well but it meanders and rambles. I want it to do something and it would be great to have the brother learn to speak. There are some nice scenes early on like the Korean grocery store but the movie fades. Instead of accelerating into the climax, it devolves into silliness.

With a ridiculous title as this, I thought the movie would be about alien black people high-fiving each other. Maybe something akin to Blackula or Black Dynamite. Boy, was I wrong. You can see something is off with expectations like these when you see the cast. None of the actors are high rollers in Hollywood, but you know most of them for their work throughout, as support characters. Joe Morton is the main character in the movie, along an African American cast that is too long to list here, but I know most of them. John Sayles, the director, is one of the "immigration agents", while the other is David Strathairn. You've got Fisher Stevens and Giancarlo Esposito in small roles. It just goes on and on. Of course, in 1984 they were not known actors, but they proved in time that they are good ones. The plot is simple, an alien running on Earth from two enforcers, but the script is filled with complexity, tackling in a subtle way things like racism, social status, societal satire. And they are part of the story, while this quiet (Joe Morton doesn't say a word all movie) timid alien is discovering Earth with its good and bad points, starting from Harlem. Bottom line: highly underrated film, it is low budget, but it has class. I am not surprised it has become a cult classic and I am glad I had the chance to see it. And it's free! You can watch it online royalty free.

In what may have been John Sayles's most Hollywood-style movie - and I use that description loosely - an alien slave (Joe Morton) lands in Harlem and tries to escape two bounty hunters (the director and David Strathairn) from his planet. In the process, even though he can't talk, he starts fixing video-games (unintentionally, natch). It just goes to show that you don't need an exorbitant budget to make a good movie about extraterrestrial life. Maybe not Sayles's all-time masterpiece, but worth seeing, partly as a look at people's everyday lives. I'd recommend it. Make all the white people disappear. Yeah...

An alien from outer space (Joe Morton) crash lands in NY. He looks like a black man, is totally mute and can fix machines and heal wounds with his bare hands. He's taken in by the citizens of Harlem who grow to like him...but he's being followed by two men in black (John Sayles and David Stratham) who want to bring him back to outer space. An interesting change of pace for director/writer and editor John Sayles...but it doesn't really work. I caught this in 1984 at an art cinema and was pretty unimpressed. My thoughts haven't really changed much. There's no real plot...just Morton wandering around and meeting all these odd but always friendly people. The dialogue is great and Morton is excellent (that's why I'm giving it a 6) but the rest of the acting is pretty bad (except for Sayles and Stratham) and nothing really happens. It just sort of lays there. It also leads to a real ambiguous ending which could be interpreted a number of different ways. Still, this was the kind of independent film that came out in the 1980s and 90s before Hollywood took them over. For that alone this is interesting to watch. It has been beautifully restored by the Anarchists Covention (???) and UCLA. It looks better now than it did in 1984!

Considering Sayles shot this as a pick-up piece to give himself something to do while waiting for financing of "Matewan," this is a remarkable film. It doesn't have the production values or amazingly well-crafted writing I've come to expect from Sayles, but it is still interesting and amusing.

The Brother From Another Planet, is about an African American alien who crash lands on Earth in Harlem, in New York City. The brother does not speak English (or any language at all) but he can understand others and soon makes friends at a local bar and gets a job fixing things. He also gets a place to stay, lodging with a single mother. Many things on Earth seem unusual to the brother and he encounters many unusual people and situations. Soon we also find out about two men in black who are after the brother and want to get rid of him. He also shows his many alien talents during the film. Winner of The Caixa de Catalunya Award for Best Actor (Joe Morton, who plays the brother) and Best Screenplay (John Sayles, who also directed and edited the film) at The Catalonian International Film Festival. The Brother From Another Planet, has good direction, a good script, a good performance by Joe Morton, as well as a good supporting cast, good original music, good cinematography and good film editing. The Brother From Another Planet, takes a little while to get into but gives us an entertaining story, a likable main character and likable side characters, interesting situations and the script is filled with good dialogue, good character development, is full of smart satire and unusual characters and lots of unique situations and plot twists. The film is quite enjoyable and entertaining and is deliciously different. I enjoyed this film quite a bit and it is a nice clever sci-fi/comedy.

A mute, three-toed, super-sensory humanoid (a fine performance from Joe Morton) arrives on Earth, appropriately landing near Ellis Island and taking up residence in Harlem, where his African American appearance helps him to blend in with the locals. The inquisitive alien sets about exploring his strange new environment, absorbing the unique sights and sounds of '80s New York with the help of his otherworldly sense of touch and his removable eyeball, but his journey of discovery is interrupted when he finds himself being hunted by two mysterious men in black... Although writer/director/star John Sayles' strongly suggests that Morton's character is an escaped slave and makes references to class divide, racism and America's history of slavery, he ensures that The Brother From Another Planet doesn't ram a moralistic or political message down the viewer's throat, focusing instead on examining the human condition though the use of interesting characters, quirky dialogue and intriguing situations. The film is all the better for it—a somewhat bizarre but fun sci-fi adventure on the surface, but one that can be dissected, examined and discussed on a deeper level if so desired.

John Sayles film, The Brother From Another Planet, uses the arhcetypes of science fiction to examine the stunted evolution of history. His story stands as a character study of a alien slave who crash lands in earth's culture epic center of New York City. Through this window into the life of the ultimate foreigner Sayles analyzes the social barriers that segregate people culturally, these divisions stand as an allegory for slavery, paralleling the nature of history, positing that it does not repeat itself so much as it evolves into different manifestations. The starting point begins with "the brother" character running from intergalactic slave traders while assimilating into the American lifestyle (an attempt to start his new life and blend into the society around him), along his way he observes the supporting cast of everyday characters and learns that several societal institutions (immigration, the drug game, sex) are mutated tools of civil control. Sayles is interested in the construction and roots of these devices, the primary barrier between human rational and animal instinct, and begs the question, is it within are makeup as human beings to fear/control the differences between people or are we predisposed as animals to exercise a Darwinian ideology of the strong dominating the weak? From his film it seems to that he believes that latter, that although we can rationally say "people are people" we can not morally explain social injustices and that there is an automated response of "dog eat dog" that restricts history from changing. While Sayles is strong in his assertions, the end of his film leaves the audience with a resolution that the subservient can only offer survive in their convictions, the just will be rewarded in their brotherhood and imperial control is fleeting/incapable to separate the plight of the many.