"Mike Cahill certainly provides the audience with some tasty food for thought"

If our eyes really are the windows to our souls then this metaphysical head-scratcher from Another Earth director Mike Cahill certainly provides the audience with some tasty food for thought. ?Cynical, stubborn but brilliant molecular biologist Ian (Michael Pitt) is fascinated by the human eye. You could say he only has eyes for eyes, taking hundreds of photographs of people’s eyes over the years.

With his hip, Parisian model chic look, Ian and his equally brilliant lab assistant Karen (Brit Marling) are trying to locate a genetic switch which prompts the creation and development of photosensitive cells, thus ultimately disproving the existence of God through the idea that certain objects, in this instance the eye, are far too complex to have been the result of evolution.

One night he meets the mysterious Sofi, (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey) a model dressed in black with a mask showing only her eyes: emerald green irises with a dark, orange centre. Ian falls for Sofi instantly, taking a photograph of her eyes for his collection. The two make love and then Sofi is gone, leaving Ian with only the photograph of her unforgettable, unapologetic stare.?Although at first glance they seem made for each other, the two characters could not be more different. While Ian represents scientific logic and reason, Sofi has a sense of faith and spirituality; the very ideas that Ian is striving to disprove. Although it is a far cry from the old science v religion debate, we can sense things are not meant to be and in this instance, opposites do definitely NOT attract.

To delve too much into the plot would set off the spoiler alert alarm but the second half of the film picks up the pace through odd experiments suggesting conspiracies, cover-ups and reincarnation. Ian begins to lose some of his scepticism in favour of Sofi’s spiritualism and maybe, just maybe begins to believe that cellular patterns and connections can be made in ways that cannot be proven through science. There are perhaps some things that science is merely too young to understand.

Markus Forderer’s cinematography deserves the plaudits. His lighting and camera work is exquisite; drawing us into an alien world of molecular biology. A field where, let’s face it, the average cinema-goer would not likely tread. But the script isn’t a preacher’s sermon straight from the Bible and doesn’t deter us with scientific jargon. As with Luc Besson’s recent effort, Lucy, the science may not all be 100% accurate but the story is an ambitious one and Cahill deserves credit for trying to tell a science fiction/romantic drama story in a positive and thought provoking way.