In Another Earth, Brit Marling, left, and William Mapother play individuals drawn together by accident.

SAN FRANCISCO — Another Earth is a science fiction film unlike most before it. With a gentle touch, it makes audiences contemplate complex physics, space travel and the possibilities of a multiverse — all while telling the rather quiet story of a young woman trying to atone for a terrible mistake that altered her own existence forever.

The movie’s lead character, Rhoda, played by writer-producer Brit Marling, tries to help a composer whose life she shattered the night a second version of Earth was discovered next door to our own planet.

What transpires is a brilliant reflection on how one person would handle knowing they did something terrible, and also knowing they could meet the alternate version of themselves who may not have made the same mistake. In doing so, it makes moviegoers contemplate issues that have been tackled by some of the world’s greatest physicists.

The film, which won the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize and a special jury prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, is so clever and thought-provoking, it’s a wonder more movies aren’t made like it. But once you learn a little about the creative forces behind Another Earth, which opens Friday, it’s easy to see where the movie’s subtle genius comes from.

Wired.com talked with Marling and the film’s writer-director-producer, Mike Cahill, recently in San Francisco to get a grasp on the heartbreaking story and the science behind it.

Director Mike Cahill explores the multiverse in Another Earth, his quiet sci-fi feature film.
(Images courtesy Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Wired.com: Explain a bit about the science in Another Earth.

Mike Cahill: Cutting-edge theoretical physics today seems to suggest that there’s a multiverse. What that means is that every possible outcome that could’ve happened mathematically has to have happened. It’s controversial science right now, but these brilliant people like Brian Greene are pondering the math that seems to suggest that it must exist.

The basic idea is that the universe is infinite but that the particles within the universe are finite. The way to think of it is like a deck of cards that’s infinitely shuffled. For me, that was fascinating. I’m a nerd and a geek, hard-core. The notion of superior conjunction and how the orbits work — I had to restrain myself not to put too much in. It gets too expositional and boring. We wanted to streamline that science for artistic purposes, for metaphor. We give enough to explain the magic of a duplicate Earth but really wanted to deal more with the emotionality of it. But on the DVD extras I can explain every detail.

Wired.com: How do you tell a story as big as the cosmos with just the two main characters in this film, Rhoda and John [played by Lost's William Mapother]?

Brit Marling: This is where I think being economics majors comes in handy. Economics is always about a proof and getting to the right answer in the fewest number of steps. You’re always trying to be more elegant with your math. The same is true of screenwriting. The same is true of filming. The same is true of acting. You can’t tell all of Rhoda’s 21 years — you have to choose the right moments. And, of course, the budget became a real constraint as well.

We didn’t have the money to show a thousand extras. So how about just showing Rhoda walking through a vacant yard where someone has left scrawled on the ground this message for the other Earth? Or the graffiti in a bathroom. That tells the story of how society is responding because you can’t afford a thousand dressed and made-up actors. All those constraints become useful. With money, it’s easy to trip into cliché. Because you can afford everything, you can afford to buy your first idea. Usually your first idea is cliché. It’s the second or third or fourth one where you start getting more original. If you can’t buy anything you want, it forces you to be more creative.

Wired.com: What’s the process like for the both of you to develop a film like this as writer-director and writer-actress?

Cahill: You take your influences from all over the place. For example, we were listening to Richard Berendzen, this great astrophysicist, and he does these lectures on tape and they take the big complexities of the cosmos and [he] delivers them in this emotional narrative that any layperson could understand. And he has such a beautiful voice and such a powerful voice that we wanted to use that in the film, so he plays the narrator. So that was one source of inspiration. We were also interested in the idea of meeting one’s self, to externalize the monologue that we have. Would you like that person?

Marling: When you’re such good friends for such a long time, you know each other really well and when you come to work each day you’re just trying to entertain and move each other. That’s hard to do. It’s not an easy thing to do to move, or surprise, or make Mike laugh, or make Mike cry. So we were coming in to work every day and telling each other the story. Mike would tell me the story for a while and I would tell him the story for a while and we were just trying to move each other. In that sweetly competitive spirit, you eventually vet everything out and you find a narrative.

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