The Brother from Another Planet (1984)

 

100 Best Science Fiction Movies, Slant Magazine list

 

# 96. The Brother from Another Planet (1984)

 

I have a special fondness of high-quality/extreme-low- budget SF films because they fly in the face of assumptions of the genre that have been entrenched since at least the mid-1960s. (According to list I found in Wikipedia in 2022, the top eighteen most expensive film productions ever were SF,F&H, and the next four on the list, “Fast & Furious 7” (2015), “The Fate of the Furious” (2017), “Specter” (2015), and “No Time to Die” (2021) might as well have been.) And when I say “extreme-low- budget” I really do mean “extreme.” The original “Flash Gordon” serial was made for $350,000 in 1936, adjusted for inflation that’s more than $7 million in 2022 USD, it it was low-budget, but not the way I mean by low. “Brother from Another Planet,” was also made for $350,000, but nearly fifty-years later, and inflation-adjusted that’s less than $1 million in 2022 USD. That’s quite an achievement given it has a large cast and dozens of both interior and exterior locations.

 

Another way the film distinguished itself was that its main setting of Harlem, in the borough of Manhattan, in NYC. In general, filmmakers associated with NYC have always had a special fondness of Harlem: its name is known world-wide as the USA’s most famous Black community, its storied history is full of romance and violence, its few square blocks feature NYC’s most beautiful architecture and environments of deepest despair.  Despite this, Director Martin Scorsese felt compelled to lament in 2002 the lack of films set in Harlem since the 1970s drew to a close; this is is less true now, we can thank Director Spike Lee for that, but was true then, and has relevance on this essay.

Filmmaking's abandonment of Harlem was one of the things that made "The Brother From …” so unique when released in 1984. Some went as far as to proclaim its Director, John Sayles, “the new voice of Harlem.”

 

Thing is, Sayles is a White guy. 

"The Brother from ..." was part of a moment that wasn't recognized until a few years later. It was a moment where Black communities were looked upon as communities, filled with full Cats of Characters, not just a lot of supporting Players in the Stories of others rooted elsewhere. Sayles was, in fact, important, and the leader of that pack was undeniably the above-mentioned Lee. Lee’s much-admired student film “Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads” (1983) was released only the year before this film, but his first theatrical feature, “She’s Gotta Have It” (1986), was still two years in the future. Also, Lee prefers to set his films in the Borough of Brooklyn, a bit farther south and across the river.

 

Unlike Scorsese and Lee, Writer/Director/Editor/Producer John Sayles, is not wholly that city. He’s currently based in California but still associated with NYC as he was born just north of it, made it his subject early in his Writing career, mostly sold that writing to NYC-based magazines, and splits some of his time between a house Hoboken, New Jersey, and Guilford, Connecticut, which are both essentially suburbs of NYC though even there’re in other states.

 

This film, though derivative of some then-current trends, is a true original. Starting with Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) there was a bushel-load of SF films that shared the same narrative scheme: A friendly Alien comes to Earth, befriends a lonely Human, feels threatened by authorities, and ultimately needs to rendezvous with a Space Ship to get rescued, they all even share the so-very-muted theme that the Alien is a Christ-figure. “Brother From …” fits most of that, though the lonely humans encountered by the Alien don’t become lead characters and the rendezvous presented here much different. This film is more about the immigrant experience than merely an unexpected visit. Though nicknamed “The Black ‘E.T.’” no one accused Sayles of aping Spielberg like they did so many others. Hell, there’s only one cute kid in the movie, and he’s not even the least bit precocious.

 

1984 was a huge year for SF cinema, driven by features with some combination of big-budgets, big-action, big-spectacle, mostly all at the same time (“Dune,” “The Terminator,” “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock,” “The Last Starfighter,” “2010: The Year We Make Contact,” “Starman” etc.) but this film rejected all those tropes.

 

Though the tale is Fantastical, the style is influenced by Italian Neo-Realism, especially the lyricism of Director Luchino Visconti’s early films. Like Visconti, it is a thoroughly specific statement of a time and a place. There’s one particular joke, told on a subway by a Street Magician (Fisher Stevens), "I got another trick for you -- wanna see all the white people disappear?” that’s so true to its place (the number 4 train traveling north on the Lexington Ave line) that no NYer can resist guffawing about it, but at the same time that NYer's girlfriend, from New Jersey, sitting next to him, totally doesn’t get it (and yes, I am describing my own experience).

 

Sayles is one of the USA’s greatest filmmakers who continually annoys some Critics who love him, because his visual style is so deliberately unstylish. As his career began as a Writer it is not a surprise that he stresses the dialogue over the visual forms. Critic Paul Attanasio describes it this way, “In John Sayles' universe, you are what you speak. His movies are filled with tavern talk, monologues bred by a culture that sits at a bar staring straight ahead at nothing, or a mirror. And it is the talk of these peerless spielers, spinning out their tastes and obsessions … a joy, not to watch, but to listen to.”

 

Here Sayles he does something bold and against his familiar forms. His Afro-American-appearing Alien (Joe Morton) is the only character who is present throughout the whole film, he’s in virtually every scene and even most of the frames, but he’s mute. This is new territory for Sayles in terms of storytelling, but Morton’s soulful performance serves it well (for his work here, Morton won Best Actor at the Caixa de Catalunya, where Sayles won Best Screenplay).

 

Our Alien crash-lands in the waters around Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty (“With silent lips/’Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’”) and it’s gradually revealed he’s a runaway Slave being hunted across the Universe by White Bounty Hunters (Sayles himself and Sayles’ frequent collaborator Actor David Strathairn).

 

Our Alien travels north, finding himself in Harlem. Like most Aliens-on-Earth stories, much of the humor emerges from cultural differences and misunderstandings, but this one is tonally different than most, because attention given to the Alien having one foot so solidly placed belonging and the other in lostness. Our Alien proves to be exceptionally wise in the manner that he integrates so quickly into almost every circumstance he's tossed into. People seem to like him because as a mute and he lets them talk. He also displays an array of vaguely defined Super-Powers and he seems to hear more than is actually said.

 

Cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, already a collaborator with Director Lee, was just beginning to develop his reputation for being skilled at conveying both the look of gritty realism and the most stylized and explosive color, and both skills are richly on display here. This represented another new thing in Sayles films, starting with “Brother From …” his films started looking a lot better.

 

The uniqueness of Sayles’ vision emerged because as he insisted on remaining the most independent of all Independent Filmmakers, and that independence was achieved largely through playing the Hollywood game better than most. Sayles described what happens to most Indie Writers/Directors, "The way that we present things is 'Here's the movie. It's not going to change much from screenplay to final film. We want final cut, casting control and business control. Are you interested?' We usually get a very nice quick no, but sometimes people say ‘Yes.’" But Sayles gets “yes” more than most because he has, at least partially, self-financed all his productions. Where does that money come from? Mostly because of the screenplays that he sells to others (his Screenwriting career started by penning B-grade Monster Movies for Producer Roger Corman), there are even scripts that paid handsomely even though they weren’t produced, an experience he described as, ''like getting drafted by the Red Sox and sent to Pittsfield.''.

 

One of those especially big sales that never got made is worth mention here because it has a connection to the above mentioned “E.T…” Under pressure to create a thematically related follow-up to “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977), Spielberg hired both Sayles and FX master Rick Baker to develop ''Night Skies,” a SF/Horror/Action film. For a little while, through convoluted processes I don’t understand, the never-realized property “Night Skies” was treated as one-in-the-same with the radically different, Family-Friendly movie, “E.T…” The Sayles' script landed in the trash while “E.T…” became the most profitable film in history.

 

“The Brother From …” was a fast project, in part a reaction to delays in getting a bigger film, "Matewan” (finally released in 1987) financed. Also important was that Sayles was blessed with a MacArthur Grant — the so-called "Genius Grant” – that pays $33,000 a year, tax-free, for five years. As the grant money covered his housing and food expenses adequately, he could dump his entire bank account into this one project, $200,000. ''[I]t's the only way I can get creative control … I'm not somebody who's good at compromising the movie.''

 

Though $200,000 is a lot for any one person, it’s chicken feed for a film (and I should say, not 100% of this budget). Sayles is an unapologetic Socialist and solidly pro-Union, but in the Film Industry, the Unions do drive-up costs hugely, so an extreme low-budget movie has to go outside the system. Though the Screen Actors Guild does co-operate with members who can only get work by dropping below Union-scale (I’ve read Actors have a 90% unemployment rate), Sayles was a member of the less co-operative Directors Guild of America, and its rules requires that its members hire only other guild members as Assistant Directors and Production Managers and at scale. Sayles again, ''The guild requires that I be paid $40,876. Even if I ripped up my own check, the other salaries would have come to $70,000.” That would’ve amounted to well-more than 30% of the budget before buying/renting equipment and props, the people who operate and/or manage the equipment and props, the Actors, or filing the permits. “I had to quit because the guild's done their job too well. They get really high minimums for their members.''

 

His previous films were also low-budget, but their circumstances were radically different. ''The Return of the Secaucus Seven'' (1980) was even cheaper at a mere $60,000, but it had a smaller cast, filmed mostly on one property, and was made before almost anyone involved had their Union cards. “Lianna'' (1983) which, at $340,000, was slightly cheaper than “The Brother From …” was more similar to “The Return of …” in circumstances and, again, a far a smaller production with fewer Actors and locations. ''Baby, It's You'' (also 1983) was his first film entrenched in more conventional processes and, though as modest as “Lianna,” cost $3 million (which, God help us, still counts as low-budget).

 

A frequent Sayles collaborator is Maggie Renzi; on this film she served as both Producer and Cast member. In an interview she said she would like the ''luxury'' of paying ''livable salaries'' and not having ''to race all over New York in an insanely short four weeks with everybody catching cold.''  She pointed out that another movie was filming in Harlem when they were, only four blocks north, ''Ultimate Solution of Grace Quigley,'' which cost $8 million (almost 23 times this film’s cost, but still considered low budget) and had big stars like Katharine Hepburn and Nick Nolte. ''They had Winnebagos, our biggest truck was the size of a bread-delivery van.''

 

“The Brother from …” is thin on plot but rich in anecdote and texture. Sayles stated in his intent was ''forcing people to look at racial and power relations they take for granted.'' With great gentleness and keen observation, the film explores racism, class struggles, crime, drugs and sex. Our Alien in not trying to be a Hero or looking for any trouble, he doesn’t save anyone or spur them into action, but he proves more than passive and does affect them. Sayles love of long talks remains despite our Alien’s muteness, as dialogue becomes monologue, and strangers pour out their own troubles, longings, and secrets to him. As Roger Ebert put it, “They tell him what he must be thinking, and behave as if they are right. He goes along.”

 

Among those he encounters:

 

A bar full of friendly regulars -- the owner Odell (Steve James), Fly (Daryl Edwards), Smokey (Leonard Jackson), and a Social Worker named Sam (Tom Wright) – none of whom know what to make of him.

 

Sam helps get our Alien get a job and a place to stay with a White mother from Alabama (Carolyn Aaron) who has a biracial child (Herbert Newsome). It’s obvious she’s almost as much a fish-out-of-water as our Alien.

 

A lovely nightclub singer (Dee Dee Bridgewater), who is too used to being ill-used by men, but sees something special in our Alien, invites him to her bed. They have a wonderful night, so much so that she barely even notices the most Alien part of his anatomy (and no, it isn’t THAT part).

 

Most people he encounters are good to him, and when he can, he is good in return. These people often live difficult lives, but in the day light, the picture of the Harlem community is an unusually positive one. Says Fly, “I'd rather be a cockroach on a baseboard up here than the Emperor of Mississippi.” But when darkness falls Harlem becomes a vision of Hell, and as our wandering Alien, who had been our de facto guide earlier, is now following a Rastafarian named Virgil (Sidney “Piankhy” Sheriff, Jr) who proclaims, “Nighttime is promise, brother. You make deals in the night. Pay all you've got for what you can't see and when sun come up. Illuminate: we been cheated again.”

 

All told, the film has a cast of about 35 people, and conveys the idea that there a are eight million stories in the naked city. These seemingly random encounters are the heart of the film, the more plot-driven aspects are less convincing. 

Our Alien taking revenge on a rich, White, Crime Boss (Edward Baran) in his high-rise office is the film’s worst conceived sub-plot. 

The scenes with our main Villains, the Bounty Hunters, are funny, but the pair is under-utilized though they do offer such rich contrast with our Alien. First appearing, they don’t fit in any better than our Alien, and they also lack his genius of empathy, so they stay that way. They move oddly, and when they try to blend, they stumble, like asking for beer “on the rocks” at a bar. People instinctively embraced our Alien and just as instinctively reject the Bounty Hunters and delightfully misdirect the Bounty Hunters with confusing verbiage.

 

The film proved successful, earning back eight times its budget, but that was eight times a microbudget, so it was wholly over-shadowed by the bigger films of its year. Since then, it has remained obscure. On the other hand, watching it again, even knowing how much Harlem has changed in the last forty-years, this film has aged much better than most of the other SF films listed above.

 

Trailer:

The Brother from Another Planet (1984), trailer - YouTube