The Brother from Another Planet
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Brother from Another Planet (1984) is an American science fiction film, written and directed by John Sayles. The low-budget film stars Joe Morton as an extraterrestrial trapped on Earth.
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Plot
Short
A mute space alien crash-lands his ship on Ellis Island. Other than his three-toed feet which he keeps covered, he resembles a black human man and manages to blend in with the people he encounters, engaging in lopsided conversations with various denizens of New York City. He displays the ability to heal the wounds of himself and others, as well as fix machines (arcade games, home appliances), by holding his hand over the affected area. He is secured housing through a new acquaintance at a Harlem bar. After fixing an arcade cabinet there, he soon lands a job as a technician. Two men in black, keen on the mute alien's whereabouts, begin to track the places and interrogate the people which he has visited. They seek to return him to the planet from which he escaped.
Longer
Joe Morton stars in this dramatic comedy, set in New York City in the early 1980s, as "The Brother," an alien and escaped slave who, while fleeing "Another Planet," has crash-landed in Upper New York Harbor.
Picked up as homeless, he is deposited in Harlem. The sweet-natured and honest Brother looks like any other black man, except that he is mute and - although other characters in the film never see them - his feet each have three large toes. The Brother 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.
He is chased by two white men, two 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. Unlike the many human characters in this film, the aliens themselves are oblivious of skin color, and screenwriter Sayles has one of the Men in Black utter an epithet "Three Toe" when describing their quarry, in attempt to prove that skin color is just as abstract as number of toes or any other human characteristic that would make one different from another.
Cast
- Joe Morton as The Brother
- Rosanna Carter as West Indian Woman
- Ray Ramirez as Hispanic Man
- Yves Rene as Haitian Man
- Peter Richardson as Islamic Man
- Ginny Yang as Korean Shopkeeper
- Daryl Edwards as Fly
- Steve James as Odell
- Leonard Jackson as Smokey
- Bill Cobbs as Walter
- Maggie Renzi as Noreen
- Olga Merediz as Noreen's Client
- Tom Wright as Sam
- Minnie Gentry as Mrs. Brown
- Ren Woods as Bernice
Soundtrack
A1 Homeboy Vocals – Joe Morton A2 Burning My Heart Out Vocals – Ren Woods A3 Dinero Arranged By – Frank London Vocals – Efraín Salgado A4 Pussy-I-Cocky-I-Water Vocals – Lee Perry A5 Getaway Vocals – Dee Dee Bridgewater A6 Dealer Steel Steel Drums – Denzil Botus B1 The Tunnel Strings, Arranged By – Martin Brody B2 Boss Of The Block Vocals – Dee Dee Bridgewater B3 Yomutha Vocals – Jeff Anderson B4 The Night Strings, Arranged By – Martin Brody B5 Dos Chase Steel Drums – Denzil Botus B6 Promised Land Choir – The Laborers in The Vineyard All Community Choir
See also
