The Man from Earth

It is seldom that movie is able to intrigue me in such a way as to wish it all to be true. The Man from Earth had me glued, unblinking, to the end. And at the end I was thoroughly satisfied, almost gleefully happy and childishly excited.

Here is a movie that asks a rather interesting question, one that would keep your imagination going wild and hungry and your coffee table discussions going long into the night. The Man from Earth asks the question, “What if a man from upper-paleolithic survived until the present day?”

And thus with that question I was taken in on a rollercoaster ride of fantastical imaginative proportions as 14,000 years of Earth’s history, with rolling landscapes, thousands of languages, millions and millions of people being born and dying, great swathes of time creating and erasing cultures and the arrival of magic and supernatural and religions, were compressed into my mind in just 1 and half hours.

But there are no super CG effects. No flashbacks or illustrations. Not even sketches. In fact, there was nothing but storytelling and dialog and that was all I (and the characters in the movie itself) had going, or indeed, had needed. The Man from Earth’s story reminded me of some of the tales from the Sandman series of graphic novels by Neil Gaiman. A man living 14,000 years can meet many interesting people. Or even deliberately choose to meet them knowing that he shall outlive them and survive to tell the story.

The premise for the plot of the movie took me almost by surprise. How could it be so simple and yet so profound – simple, yet astoundingly intriguing at a deeply intellectual level. Perhaps it is because, given our limited lifespan, we yearn to live the millenniums to see what the passage of time would reveal. It would indeed be something to meet a 14,000 year old living man. That’s for sure.

It would definitely make it easy to predict our behaviour as a species. Would the current religions die away a thousand years from now as did other belief systems before? Would there be another ice-age? Or even a nuclear holocaust that would send humanity to the brink of extinction? Will we leave our planet and start a migratory journey into space?

To bear witness to the millenniums must be like being God.

I highly recommend this one. Grab a coffee (or 2), put on your headsets and just enjoy.