Watching John Sayles' The Brother from Another Planet, it can be difficult to believe that it was made for only $350,000. These days it seems like even an independent drama with no special effects or established names can't even get made for less than one million dollars. But, lo and behold, Sayles proved that great films don't need great budgets. But I suppose we should have all seen that coming. A student of Roger Corman, the godfather of B-movies, Sayles got his film education making films for pennies. So when Sayles received a MacArthur Fellows "genius" grant of $350,000, it only stood to reason that he would make something special. The result was the aforementioned The Brother from Another Planet. It follows an unnamed "Brother," or alien, who crash lands in the Upper New York Harbor in the early 1980s while on the run. The Brother looks exactly like a normal black human except for his feet which each sport only three toes. On his old world, having three toes meant that you were a slave. And so we have the familiar scenario of a stranger in a strange land. Only this time, it's an alien in New York City. We travel through the usual cliches of this particular story: culture shock (the concept of money confuses him), finding a group of friends (the denizens of a black bar), falling in love (with a lounge singer), and fighting off people who try to return him to his original home (two white "hunters"). But what's fascinating is how Sayles' manages to perfectly utilize these established tropes so that they seem fresh and new again. All of story developments feel organic, not forced. And Sayles has an impeccable eye for capturing New York City's cultural richness. The title makes it sound like a knock-off blaxploitation flick. But The Brother from Another Planet is something much, much more.
9/10
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