The Brother from Another Planet
| The Brother from Another Planet | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | John Sayles |
| Produced by | Peggy Rajski Maggie Renzi |
| Screenplay by | John Sayles |
| Starring |
Joe Morton Darryl Edwards Steve James Bill Cobbs David Strathairn |
| Music by |
Mason Daring John Sayles Denzil Botus |
| Cinematography | Ernest R. Dickerson |
| Edited by | John Sayles |
| Distributed by | Cinecom Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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104 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $350,000 |
| Box office | over $4 million |
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.
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.
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.
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."
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