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THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET
Rating:  ½
USA. 1984.
Director/Screenplay – John Sayles, Producers – Peggy Rajsui & Maggie Renzi, Photography – Ernest Dickerson, Music – Mason Daring, Makeup – Ralph Cordero, Production Design – Nora Cavooshian. Production Company – A-Train Films.
Cast:
Joe Morton (The Brother), John Sayles (Uno), David Strathairn (Dos), Darry Edwards (Fly), Leonard Jackson (Smokey), Caroline Aaron (Randy Sue Carter), Dee Dee Bridgewater (Malverne Davis), Tom Wright (Sam Prescott)
Plot: A mute, black alien escapes from slavery. On the run, it crashlands on Earth. In a Manhattan bar, the alien is accepted by the locals who find him a place to stay and a job after he demonstrates the ability to heal electronic equipment simply by touching it. There he tries to make sense of human culture while falling for a beautiful singer. But soon two tall, sinister alien slavers arrive to recapture him.
This marvellously witty little film was made by cult writer-director John Sayles. Today Sayles is one of America’s foremost independent filmmakers with the likes of the quite brilliant Matewan (1987) and the highly acclaimed likes of Passion Fish (1992), The Secret of Roan Inish (1995), Lone Star (1996), Men with Guns (1997), Limbo (1999), Sunshine State (2002), Case de los Babys (2003), Silver City (2004) and Honeydripper (2007). Up until making The Brother from Another Planet, Sayles had made money writing B movies for Roger Corman – including genre movies such as Piranha (1978), Alligator (1980), Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) and The Howling (1980). Sayles debuted as director with the competently made gangster film Lady in Red (1979) and the teen drama Baby It’s You (1982). Such work allowed him to break out as an independent with this film, which he made for a mere $400,000, most of it bankrolled out of his own pocket.
The film jumps on the alien visitors trend inspired by Spielberg and E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) – but Sayles’ spin is to take E.T.out of the suburbs and into Harlem. It is E.T. with a hip urban social conscience – the alien here is not so much a wide-eyed anthropomorph come to touch the empty lives of the young at heart but akin to Peter Sellers’s Chauncy Gardener in Being There (1979). Joe Morton (who in his subsequent bit parts has never been better than he has here), is written as a wide-eyed Candide, set up to wander through the film in mute, blank-faced deadpan taking on the absurdities of our culture – asked to point the way to the subway he jerks his thumb at the floor; buying a record he throws the vinyl away but keeps the picture on the sleeve.
Sayles writes and the talented cast provide a series of monologues that are extremely funny – the secretary on the phone complaining about the guy who wants a relationship with her after having gone out with her five times, or the encounter between Joe Morton and two guys on their way to a self-actualization conference. But the most hilariously bizarre feature of all is David Strathairn and Sayles himself who play the two aliens slavers, who are like epileptic fish out of water with their lumbering, jerky gait and attempts to blend in familiar mannerisms – like entering a bar and ordering two beers on the rocks.
The film is never really more than a series of appealing vignettes. And it does take time out near the end to deliver an unnecessary anti-drugs lecture, but it is hardly a misstep in its otherwise perfectly charming and whimsical stride.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1990
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