The Actors from ‘Another Earth’ Want the Fans to Decide What Their Movie Means

Another Earth is a fascinating indie from Fox Searchlight, about how humanity reacts to a second Earth suddenly showing up in their atmosphere one night. Specifically, the story focuses on Rhoda (Brit Marling), who makes the one mistake that dashes her future at MIT: She gets into a car accident that kills John’s (William Mapother) wife and child. When she gets out of jail four years later,  Earth II is nearly in line with ours, and Rhoda searches out John to apologize, but instead hides her true identity.

Like all good speculative-fiction movies, Another Earth showcases an intimate, sparse story against the large scope of this jarring new reality. And while it has a compelling emotional journey, the ending is — wisely, frustratingly — ambiguous. At the roundtables last month, I had a wonderful conversation with stars Marling and Mapother, as well as writer-director Mike Cahill, about whether directors and writers should shine a light on vague, open endings. (I had to cut some parts for length, but the flow of the conversation didn’t change.)

Crushable: At the earlier roundtable, William mentioned that fans’ interpretations of the endings of ambiguous stories carry as much weight as the creators’—and I feel like I have to disagree. I grew up thinking that for however many theories I made up about a movie or TV show, I was always comforted when the creator would sit down and finally say, “This is what I meant.”

Mapother: Mike can tell you, ‘Oh no, no, this shot means x.’ He may have intended for it to mean x, but the fact that he says it means x doesn’t mean it means x.

Cahill: It’s totally a philosophical thing. David Lynch always did that, too: ‘The audience’s interpretation of the work is exactly the purpose of my work.’ When we were writing [the movie]… there is a very clear understanding of what happens. I could map it out for you, when that [looks at the tape recorder] was off and we were having some drinks. But I do like what you’re saying—the audience’s understanding of it is not just valid, it’s valuable. It’s beautiful; we’ve discovered in a lot of these Q&As, people have a lot of very different interpretations of what happened.

Brit Marling: Shockingly different from one another. Which is why you don’t want to ever say what we all were thinking.

Cahill: It’s Rhoda’s belief or hope that [the people on Earth II have different fates than those on Earth], but she and we don’t know whether the accident occurred on the other side. She says to John, ‘Maybe they’re up there, maybe not. But maybe.’ I feel more comfortable with that maybe.

Marling: Because life is that way. Our whole experience of being alive, of being human, is so “maybe, maybe not.” Why are we here?