Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Movie review: The man from the Earth.


I have seen a lot of sci-fi movies, all centered on different unusual concepts, but this one sets itself apart & is really quite unusual, simply lets u appreciate your sense of logical reasoning....guiding, misguiding, until the point where you are completely involved & lost.

This may not be classified exactly as science fiction, but it’s just a collection of logical & intellectual discussions happening somewhere sometime…..

There is this young history professor, John who is kind of famous or favorite among his colleagues for his profound knowledge, suddenly mysteriously disappearing or leaving the town. His colleagues, who are also his good friends, are very much concerned about him & curious to know the reason behind this decision, drop by his house, also to wish him good luck.
Upon being asked several times for his decision, he refuses to reveal the reason & just replies that he likes to move on in life. His colleagues who are quite experts in their respective domains like Anthropology, religion, biology, philosophy etc are simply not willing to let him go without telling the reason behind his moving from there.
An artifact, a stone found in his home leads to discussions on an interesting topic that how would a man be if he is not ageing, say from Paleolithic time. Just consider the possibility that somehow some mechanism kept him alive: A perfect detox mechanism & perfect regeneration of his body cells & organs, recovery mechanism from various diseases. He should have learnt to fight the predators & just simply keep moving on in life without attachments. He would have seen civilizations born, flourish & get extinct, he would have wandered over mountains, valleys, learnt a lot of languages, seen different tribes, of course protecting his life somehow against all the possible dangers.
John claims that he is this man who has lived from 14,000 years. Of course no body believes him, but the topic is so interesting that everyone starts asking him questions on various topics likes geography religion, beliefs etc. this leads to a series of logical arguments & John is having an instant convincing answer every time. They all realize that that there is no way to prove or disprove his hypothesis, instead go with the flow of his story asking his experiences in his lifetime that stretched over vast bounds of time & places. His arguments can be obtained from any history book read in school & that’s what John exclaims that when he read the book, he correlated with his own life & understood the reality. This fact is simply difficult to digest that such a thing could have happened with him, he just simply lived endlessly !! Considering this scenario, the knowledge of such a man would be tremendous. He says he traveled a lot just like any normal man would do. He learnt a lot & was considered God by some tribes owing to his non ageing feature. He once met a man who he felt was like him never ageing to die but no way to prove the same, lost contact with him & moved on in life. He is just logically correct all the time in his arguments. He even proclaims that he was with Buddha, & goes on to say that he was Jesus. He learnt a method to slow down the body processes so that he suppressed pain & preached good things like humanity & brotherhood etc; he recollects the important historic events so well in their original form which can be possible by a person who has actually lived in those times.
He says that he has kept moving on in life overcoming his attachments & emotions, & that is why he is moving on now. They discuss various subjects like science religion, medicine, etc & are just taken by & lost in the arguments. His friends are very much disturbed by his arguments, lost in their logical reasoning to an extent that they want to believe him but that’s just not acceptable to their senses. He finally admits that he made this all up as a play & his friends played & supported him in continuing the game everyone throwing the dice in turns. But guess what is the truth !! our John is a cave man surviving from thousands of years.


Probably this movie in some way teaches that unlike John, we have a finite lifetime. ....& we should enjoy to the fullest.


What could a prehistoric man make of when he looked up at the sky? The vast streatch of darkness, the twinkling of stars etc would have made a great sense of mystery engulfed by his thoughts about his own consciousness.
Probably he believed there are gods & demons up there, helplessly trying to let go of feelings which never seemed to find an answer. He can’t make up his own mind that what he is seeing is an illusion or reality when the concept of real & virtual itself is unknown to him.

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