Freedom Flight: The Brother from Another Planet

An alien crash-lands in sight of The Statue of Liberty at the beginning of John Sayles’ fourth directorial film, The Brother from Another Planet (1984). Injured and alert to his new surroundings, the dark-skinned extraterrestrial, the titular Brother, is a newly-arrived refugee that must quickly adapt to 1980s Harlem culture to survive. Even though The Brother is unsure of his new surroundings, he, like so many previous expatriates before him, will boldly subsist in this land he now finds sanctuary. Thus, The Brother from Another Planet is John Sayles’ socially-conscious science fiction tale of immigration and citizenship status.

Though The Brother (Joe Morton) blends in with Harlem citizenry due to his dark skin, he stands out immediately due to his torn clothing, as residents silently stare at him as if he were homeless (which he is, having just arrived to this new town, new country, new world). Communicating with others is also difficult for The Brother as he is completely mute. In an early attempt to understand the exchange of currency, the hungry Brother is nearly arrested when he attempts to buy produce from a grocer with money taken from the store owner’s own cash register. Hence, The Brother has to perform menial jobs to earn the currency that is needed to survive the streets of Harlem. 

He is soon put to work fixing broken arcade machines, for The Brother has the power of restoration. Just as he healed his injured foot to regrow upon landing, The Brother merely has to touch the machines to make them function once more. This is a simple plot decision from this minimally-budgeted film for audiences to discern The Brother’s powers. In an amusing moment of meta-comedy, The Brother, an intergalactic fugitive, allows the arcade’s best player to play the classic game of Astro Chase at a speed that challenges her skills, much to her delight. Thus, The Brother, an interstellar immigrant who has command over both anatomy and appliance, participates as a positive member of this community.

The Harlem that The Brother encounters is as it truly existed, a melting pot of culture. A hallmark of Sayle’s career is that each of his movies has an excellent music design. In The Brother from Another Planet, the diversity of the Harlem culture is matched by equally-diverse music including steel drums, reggae, and rhythm & blues. At one point, The Brother falls for the image of local singer Malverne Davis (Dee Dee Bridgewater), so much so that he purchases her LP just for the album cover, meanwhile throwing away the actual vinyl record! This occurs to the doo-wop number of Little Anthony and the Imperials’ “Two People in the World” whose lyrics sings of love occurring in “all the stars above”, another clever reference to The Brother’s interstellar roots by way of musical meta-humor. Thus, the film’s music design is as The Brother would discover it, on the streets and in the clubs. 

“You hit Harlem, you had made it,” reminisces Walter (Bill Cobbs), one of the regular bar patrons that The Brother encounters. This sentiment is enhanced later in the film, when The Brother overhears a museum tour group learning that Harlem was the “end-of-the-line” for The Underground Railroad. This means if a runaway slave had made it to Harlem then they were free from harm. Sayles portrays Harlem as a minority community that is a safe haven for immigrants.

The Brother is not the only character that is culturally assimilated to Harlem in the film. In an amusing scene, two visiting white sociology students, Ed (Chip Mitchell) and Phil (David Babcock), accidentally find themselves lost in town. “I think we’re in Harlem, Ed,” cries Phil, nervously. It is a moment of Caucasian discomfort for the two students in the Black-dominated populace. However, their nervousness soon fades as they find themselves enjoying the company of the regular bar patrons that The Brother also frequents. The white students may be fish-out-of-the-water in the Harlem environment, but they are in no danger, a classic misconception that Sayles gleefully challenges in this comedic moment.

The Brother, however, is in danger, even in Harlem, for he is hunted by intergalactic bounty hunters (performed by Sayles himself and longtime collaborator/actor David Strathairn). While The Brother is a black space alien hunted by white space aliens, the prejudice that exists between these interstellar foes is not due to the color of their skins but because The Brother belongs to a race whose feet have only three toes. While some may find such invented prejudice ridiculous, this plot point is poignant, for is it any less ridiculous than the centuries of hatred that has existed over the epidermis’ pigmentation of our own species?

While The Brother’s adventures with the film’s various characters may be disconnected, they are not aimless. Instead, they are the purposeful assimilation of this society’s age, the obstacles that all newcomers face when they attempt to embrace a new community as a rightful citizen. When asked multiple times where he comes from, The Brother mutely responds by giving a thumbs-up gesture; as the audience, we know that The Brother means outer space, but it is amusing how each character misinterprets The Brother’s meaning, never guessing his interstellar origins. Through the lens of an alien combating the alienation that immigrants face, the film reveals the struggle for cultural assimilation. As Shuggie Otis once played, The Brother has arrived to this community on a freedom flight.

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