The Man from Earth Reviews

By now, I have seen almost 5000 movies and I’m more or less aware of 4000 more so I think I have a pretty good knowledge about movies. However, I don’t know everything and when one of my colleagues recommended me this flick, I honestly drew a blank. Then, I checked it out on IDMb and I did actually came across this flick a couple of times before and I always wondered about its very high rating (8.0). Anyway, at some point, I finally ended up watching the damned thing and, well, I was pretty much blown away, that’s for sure. Of course, the whole thing looked pretty cheap and the acting felt, at first, rather amateurish but I just loved the concept. I mean, basically, you had a room filled with some intellectuals, discussing a huge ‘what if…’ and it was just fascinating to behold. The whole thing was actually pretty ambiguous but it was exactly why I really liked it. The way, at the end, the main character tied up the whole thing by telling his friends it was just a story was just brilliant. I mean, you could feel the relief from all his friends ‘Ok, we can all go back to our life now, everything is back to normal’ but what if he actually lied so they could actually sleep at night? It was a perfect ending and it is too bad that, after that, they felt compelled to add an extra scene giving some ‘proof’ that everything was supposedly true which pretty much ruined most of the ambiguity. They also went too far by making the main character proclaiming that he was Jesus himself, he already met Buddha which was already enough for me. Anyway, in spite of these few flaws, it was a spellbinding feature, really simple but so brilliant and it is definitely worth a look.

Even though its a quite limited film, much because of its low budget, it has a really powerful script, that certainly will leave anyone chewing on some hardcore questions concerning mankind.

What a great idea completely wasted.

"- When did you begin to believe you were Jesus?
- When did you begin to believe you were a psychiatrist?"

Amazing story! The questions, the answers, even the unanswered questions, they all say so much. The twists in the movie show how weakly we believe in human knowledge. Historical changes in science and religion are presented and also corroborate that idea. All we need is someone to tell us a coherent and believable story, as John does along the movie. The drama becomes clear with the repeated line "anything is possible", letting our beliefs scarily small. But in the end, beliefs are all that are left to us...

To me, the movie just fails in exploiting the possibilities of cinematography. John's house is the only setting. I mean, the movie is about the whole world, right?! The things that John said about it, I had to imagine all of them, like if I were reading a book.