Man from earth – review

Possibly the cheapest or least expensive good movie ever made with multiple cast. It involves couple of cars, one cabin like room with minimal furniture, half a dozen people, some food items, couple of packers and movers who are in frame for couple of minutes and an amazing group conversation stretching over solid 100 mins. Man from earth puts min in minimalist movies and In on intelligent dialogues. The story is about a college professor well in his prime, who suddenly decides to resign his permanent tenure and promising career to move away from everything. His close circle of friends for last ten years, mostly his colleagues, are clueless on his decision and gate crashes his leaving. He is in the midst of shifting the essentials to his transport when the party makes the surprise visit. They delay him and pester him to share his plans. He finally relents and says that it is his ritual not to stay at a place for more than a decade and it is something he has been following from the time of stone age!! He reveals his shocking secret that he had been immortal for 14000 years. What happens next is very natural and quite logical flow of conversation, starting from treating the reveal as a joke to mocking him and then seeing his responses getting slightly confused and finally freaking out on the biggest revelation of who and all he had been in his long life. For over a hour and a half, the group moves the story forward by their queries and they are exactly the same questions we would’ve asked had an of our friends been around for that long. There are some obvious logical loop holes like how he survived the floods, animals, diseases etc. But skipping those micro level questions, at the whole it was an intriguing conversation. Finally they all make him take back his words that it was all an elaborate joke by him and he relents. When the party leaves the cabin, each have their own reaction to the discussion. Some believe it was fake and a big time prank, some took it very seriously and gets angry while for some they are totally confused on who the person and what is real. When the doctor guy of that group is about to leave, there is a major revelation that happens for him and it answers the questions raised by all. The entire premise leaves one with a WOW when the ending rushes up on you. Understand that there were some sequels to this story as well. Would love to see how it all ended.

Gils verdict - The movie is more than 10 years old and has received fascinating reviews all this while. It was recommended almost an year back for me and finally managed to see it. To me, the loopholes still remain unanswered but as a concept it was fascinating, something I always wonder about – how it would be to the one person who has seen it all. And the format is also quite easy to follow, lots of discussions and logical question answer type session. Hope you like it as well.