Black History Month: Looking Back at "The Brother From Another Planet"

As February is Black History Month, I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at some screen projects that have been overlooked, unsung, or considered also-rans in the canon of African America film.

Brother From Another Planet (1984)
Written, Directed and Edited by John Sayles
Starring Joe Morton

This film is a personal favorite of mine. Eight years after David Bowie was The Man Who Fell to Earth, and the very same year that Jeff Bridges portrayed an alien who just wants to get home in Starman, Joe Morton made his breakout performance in this John Sayles indie as a dreadlocked, goodhearted alien who crashlands on New York's Ellis Island and tries to understand what earthlings are all about. His journey is complicated by the fact that he is mute and can hear the voices of humans embedded in the objects they used. He appears mostly human, but his three-toed feet -- not to mention his extra-sensory perceptions -- mark him as different.

He manages to cross the Hudson and arrive at 125th Street in Harlem, where his skintone helps him blend in. But soon he is assaulted by the sounds of multiple languages, hip-hop, salsa, and video games, and confronted by images of a crucified Jesus, street crime, and drug use. Living by his wits and an alien ability to heal wounds and manipulate machinery, the Brother is helped by a local social worker (Tom Wright) and winds up with a job and a place to live with a chatty single mother (Caroline Aaron) and her young biracial son.

The brilliance of this film is that we see the complete absurdity, violence, variety, vice and mayhem of contemporary life through his eyes. What's more, in the presence of a man who doesn't speak, nearly every person he runs across becomes a virtual motormouth, giving sway to their beliefs, fears, prejudices, memories, and hopes as he listens, wide-eyed and agog.

As it turns out, the Brother is a fugitive from his planet's justice, and when white bounty hunters in black arrive (played by David Strathairn and Sayles himself) it becomes clear that on his planet, he was held as a slave.

Perhaps best known today as "Papa Pope" on TV's Scandal, Joe Morton is in nearly every scene and he is absolutely brilliant. His eyes say everything about the predicament he finds himself in, and his physicality communicates the sensory discomfort and surprise of being in unfamiliar surroundings.

He is surrounded by an ace troupe of reliable stage and screen character actors, including Broadway and recording legend Dee Dee Bridgewater as a local singer who turns on her love light; Carl Gordon (known as Charles Dutton's father on '90s sitcom Roc) as a romantic rival; busy character actor Bill Cobbs (seen on Greenleaf) as a barroom philosopher; funnyman Leonard Jackson (Carwash, Boomerang, The Color Purple) as another barroom pal; Caroline Aaron, who's appeared in dozens of films and plays the mother of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel; and Tom Wright, a stalwart from dozens of TV shows (including Punch from Ray Donovan) as a helpful social worker. Even Josh Mostel shows up for two minutes as a Casio keyboard vendor.

Sayles has made a career of making independent movies that look at the impact of race, sex, and class on the intersected lives of community members (his 1996 film about a Texas border town Lone Star and a southern Florida town in 2002's Sunshine State are other personal favorites). He also adds clever references to other films, including The Treasure of the Sierra Madre ("we don't need no stinkin' badges!"), the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and other films. Here Sayles makes us consider just what we have wrought as a society.

While we have a long way to go in terms of a truly harmonious planet, freedom from bondage on Earth -- strange as it is -- looks like Heaven to this Brother.