I Origins

Mike Cahill's new movie touches upon several of the themes he explored in Another Earth, a compelling opera prima done on a very low budget. Although it is an uneven movie, at least the first half hour of Another Earth is effectively disquieting and its premise is very intriguing. What if there was another planet just like ours across from us in space? Unfortunately, Cahill chucks the rich possibilities of metaphysical exploration in favor of heavy personal melodrama. Still, Another Earth is a much more accomplished and interesting film than I Origins.
This time, Cahill got more money for camera, casting, locations and lights and the movie looks better, but the content is not.  In both films, Cahill's mishmash of scifi, romance and melodrama doesn't quite gel. Whereas in Another Earth he showed promise, in I Origins Cahill seems way out of his depth.
Michael Penn and Brit Marling play a couple of extremely good looking scientists who are trying to recreate a biological eye in the lab. Even if their scientific jargon is realistic, it sounds like mumbo jumbo. The audience is confused and we swat it away. There is nothing remotely believable in this movie, which is an uneasy mix of romantic fantasy, scientific caper, and sophomoric spiritual philosophizing. It's a problem when a movie about intelligent people is not intelligent enough.
The movie starts as Dr. Ian Gray (Pitt) meets a mysterious, and like many such creatures in film, obnoxious young woman (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), who may or may not be some sort of ancient spirit. She picks a fight with the doctor over his steadfast, and increasingly obtuse refusal to believe even in the existence of the soul. A lot of weird unexplainable things happen to him that he tries to solve through reasoning; the universe is trying to tell him something that he refuses to hear. This happens for way too long, so we lose patience. Then the movie veers into some vague pursuit of the possibility of reincarnation. None of it is compelling, none of it is sufficiently explained, or even convincingly believed by anyone involved. Michael Pitt is lovely to look at, but he seems to be phoning it in, Brit Marling is, as usual intriguingly charismatic, but she plays the same person she always does. The only good things in the movie are a wonderful Archie Panjabi and a soulful Indian girl called Kashish.
I thought of Terence Malick's The Tree Of Life, a tone poem that amazed and exasperated people in equal numbers. Malick, I think, was trying to express, mostly in stunning visuals, that a belief in evolution and faith in divine grace are not mutually exclusive.  Mike Cahill is trying to aim that high, but does not have the poetic gifts of Terence Malick, and he is incapable or reaching anything beyond the obvious.

The East

This movie by Zal Batmanglij, co-written by his frequent collaborator and star Brit Marling, is completely preposterous but it has a great premise. A group of disaffected  rich kids decide to give evil corporations a taste of their own medicine, by using their poisonous drugs and chemicals on them. A fabulous revenge fantasy, ain't it?
Except that revenge is never as clean.
Sarah (Marling), works for a corporate spying law firm, headed by the awesome Patricia Clarkson, and is sent to infiltrate an anarchist group, which threatens some of her firm's clients. Though she is loyal to her work, dutifully ratting out the group, she can't help but be affected by their insular hippy-dippy lifestyle, by the injustices the group tries to right and by the charms of the über-cute group leader, Alexander Skarsgård, who even with a horrifying head of hippie hair, is irresistible to the female eye. If all revolutionaries were this hot, we would live in a different world. Skarsgård is a subtle, resourceful actor, but he lacks the manic charisma that tends to be typical of revolutionary leaders. He is the nicest anarchist ever.
Marling is really good at playing steely dames, and she is very compelling here. This is a thriller starring a woman, who has a fearsome female boss, and neither of them make you miss the guys who usually star in these types of movies. Meaning: it is possible. It's great to have a female spy hero for a change. It is great to see women in powerful roles, including a very good Julia Ormond as a corporate P.R. person.
As they showed in their previous outing, Sound of My Voice, Marling and Batmanglij are interested in exploring underground movements. Last time around it was a creepy cult, now it's a revolutionary cooperative, for which they have more sympathy (therefore making the movie less creepy).
How can you deal with state-sanctioned evil? Revenge seems to unleash more evil, but sometimes the available legal options are not sufficient, particularly when the laws are there to protect corporate villains. Credit is due to the writers for not over-simplifying the thorny issue. Revenge on the corporations sounds good until it becomes a childish, unhinged prank. I had issues with the story lines of rich kids feeling shame for their parents' sins. Yes, the personal is political, but it would also be nice if the characters were just outraged, as we all are, at corporate malfeasance without a personal trauma to boost them to action. At times, the device of making everything personal risks making it borderline ridiculous.
Batmanglij is an economical, effective director and he delivers a taut, suspenseful thriller, if you overlook its hanging threads and strained plot points. But since siding 100% with the revolutionaries is not really possible for a commercial film backed by a corporation like Fox, the movie hedges its bets. The welcome ambivalence it portrays in the ideological allegiances of the characters, in whether what they are doing is righteous or infantile, leads to an equally ambivalent, unconvincing ending that robs the movie of power. Still, Batmanglij and Marling are making small, contrary movies that are well worth following.