The Brother from Another Planet

Its about people...

John Sayles spent the late 1970's writing and producing largely forgettable movies for B-movie maestro Roger Corman, including Piranha (1978), which told the story of a small community under attack from (you guessed it) piranhas, and Battle Beyond the Stars (1980), which basically retold the story of Star Wars, but with much cheaper-looking special effects and Richard Thomas (John Boy in The Waltons) in the Hans Solo role (I have to say I despised Battle Beyond the Stars).

He began directing his own movies in 1980, all of which were very much character driven, with dialogue rather than action driving the narrative. This reflected both his backgrounds as a writer and his interest in creating multi-dimensional, realistic characters, as well as an obvious lack of money to spend. During this time, he made Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980), Lianna (1983) and Baby, It's You (1983), all of which explored different aspects of personal relationships. Return... has been often been compared favourably to The Big Chill ,which was released in the same year.

In 1984 he wrote and directed The Brother from Another Planet, about a black mute alien (Joe Morton plays the eponymous Brother) who lands on Ellis Island and wanders into a bar in Harlem. The regulars take pity on him, and fix him with a place to stay. When he fixes an arcade video game in the bar, he manages to get a job fixing arcade machines. He is able to 'heal' both people and machines by touch alone. However, he is a fugitive from his own planet, and two white aliens (John Sayles and David Strathairn) have arrived to apprehend him.

The Brother gets to experience life in Harlem, and is particularly puzzled by the interaction between blacks and whites. He also sees the effects of drug addiction on its inhabitants, and a subplot deals with his own encounter with heroin.

The film is at its best when the regulars at the bar, barman Walter (Bill Cobb), barflies Odell, Fly and Smokey as well as social worker Sam (Tom Wright) are hanging out in the bar, philosophising about life in general and in particular. Sayles quietly makes some effective points about racial harmony and conflict. One wonders if Spike Lee had been influenced by this movie (in at least a small way) when he made Do the Right Thing in 1989. (For trivia fans, Ginny Yang plays much the same role in both movies as a Korean shopkeeper, and John Sayles himself plays another 'man in black' as an FBI agent in Malcolm X).

Morton's character has a gentle child-like innocence whose amazement and bewilderment of normal situations is intended to highlight, for the audience, the absurdities and complexities of everyday life, at least in Harlem. He is also quite literally alienated, though he is no rush to get home, since he is a slave on his own world. This is not a new cinematic device - James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) was probably one of the first films to portray such a character, but David Bowie's alien in The Man who fell to Earth (1976, Nicholas Roeg) shares many of the same characteristics. Morton never speaks, so other characters talk to him, and in doing so, reveal their hopes and fears, ideals and disappointments. His performance is solid and thankfully free of gimmicks, given that his part was not an easy one to play.

However, The Brother's attempts to 'do good', as depicted by his treatment of a drug dealer, points to a very simplistic analysis of Harlem's drug problems, breaking it down into an 'us versus them' scenario. It doesn't sit well with the rest of the movie. The subplot of The Brother's pursuit is also a little clumsy. The antics of the two white aliens (Sayles, Strathairn) are more likely to provoke laughs, not always intentionally. It is as if occasionally, his former role as schlock-writer (for Corman) peeks through. Nevertheless, though Sayles' vision is obviously hampered by his miniscule budget, this is a well-intentioned and entertaining movie, and employed a unique ploy to examine a slice of life in the U.S. that had hitherto been largely ignored, long before other filmmakers (particularly white filmmakers). It also points to his future direction, which would lead to Matewan (1987), Eight Men Out (1988) and Passion Fish (1992) in the following decade.

Directed by John Sayles.

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