The Brother from Another Planet



The Brother from Another Planet is a 1984 science fiction film written, directed and edited by John Sayles. It stars Joe Morton as "The Brother", an alien and escaped slave who, while fleeing "Another Planet", has crash-landed and hides in Harlem. It has been also described as a film in the Afrofuturism genre.

Plot
The sweet-natured and honest Brother looks like an ordinary African American man, distinguished only by his being mute and - although other characters in the film never see them - his feet, which each have three large toes. Upon arrival in Ellis Island, the Brother displays psychic powers, being able to hear the experiences of the immigrants that came before him. The Brother also has telekinetic powers but, unable to speak, he struggles to express himself and adjust to his new surroundings, including a stint in the Job Corps at a video arcade in Manhattan.

The Brother has escaped enslavement on the planet he comes from. This is made evident in the film when he is in a museum with a young boy. He points to an illustration, displayed in the museum, depicting an enslaved African American who is running away, and then points to himself, indicating a similarity.

He is chased by two white Men in Black (David Strathairn and director Sayles himself); Sayles's twist on the Men in Black concept is that instead of government agents trying to cover up alien activity, Sayles's Men in Black are also aliens, out to re-capture "The Brother" and other escaped slaves and bring them back to their home planet.

While the Brother does not speak, much of the film consists of other characters blabbing on to him, seemingly unaware, or uncaring of the fact that he does not respond. This can be interpreted as a commentary on how self-absorbed people are.

Cast

 * Joe Morton as The Brother
 * Sidney "Piankhy" Sheriff Jr. as Virgil
 * Rosanna Carter as West Indian Woman
 * Ray Ramirez as Hispanic Man
 * Yves Rene as Haitian Man
 * Peter Richardson as Islamic Man
 * Ginny Yang as Korean Shopkeeper
 * Daryl Edwards as Fly
 * Steve James as Odell
 * Leonard Jackson as Smokey
 * Ishmael Houston-Jones (Dancer)
 * Carolyn Aaron as Randy Sue Carter


 * Bill Cobbs as Walter
 * Maggie Renzi as Noreen
 * Olga Merediz as Noreen's Client
 * Tom Wright as Sam
 * Minnie Gentry as Mrs. Brown
 * Ren Woods as Bernice
 * Fisher Stevens as Card Trickster
 * Dee Dee Bridgewater as Malverne Davis
 * David Strathairn as Man in Black
 * John Sayles as Man in Black
 * Bert Simms as drummer (uncredited)

Production
Sayles describes this movie as being about the immigrant experience of assimilation. He spent part of his MacArthur Fellows "genius" grant on the film, which cost $350,000 to produce.

Critical response
Variety called it "vastly amusing but progressively erratic" film structured as a "series of behavioral vignettes, [many of which] are genuinely delightful and inventive"; as it continues, the film "takes a rather unpleasant and, ultimately, confusing turn." Vincent Canby called it a "nice, unsurprising shaggy-dog story that goes on far too long" but singled out "Joe Morton's sweet, wise, unaggressive performance." Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying "the movie finds countless opportunities for humorous scenes, most of them with a quiet little bite, a way of causing us to look at our society", noting that "by using a central character who cannot talk, [Sayles] is sometimes able to explore the kinds of scenes that haven't been possible since the death of silent film."

The A.V. Club, in a 2003 review of the film's DVD release, says the film's superhero scenes are "often unintentionally silly, but again, Sayles shapes a catchy premise into a subtler piece, using Morton's 'alien' status as a way of asking who deserves to be called an outsider in a country born of outsiders"; commenting on the DVD, they note its "marvelous" audio commentary track by Sayles, "who moves fluidly from behind-the-scenes anecdotes to useful technical tips to unpretentious dissections of his own themes."