The Brother from Another Planet

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The Brother from Another Planet is a 1984 film written and directed by John Sayles.

[edit] Plot

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 comedy, the aliens themselves are oblivious to skin color, and screenwriter Sayles has one of the Men in Black utter an epithet "Three Toe" when describing their quarry.

Much of the film's comedy is the contrast between the extremely-alert-to-race human characters and the perplexity experienced by the three aliens, unfamiliar with and oblivious to racism in American culture. Despite its comedy and slightly goofy premise, the film is an intelligent social critique, as when the Brother accidentally injects heroin.