Tonight, I would like to recommend a film that you’ve probably never heard of, but that (especially if you read my blog regularly) is really worth your time. Jerome Bixby’s The Man From Earth.
Warning: This film will make you think.
The biggest drawback to this movie (to somebody with severe ADHD like me) is that you have to pay attention. There is no action. Really, pretty much none – it’s all dialogue. Almost the entire movie takes place in a tiny cabin, mostly in the living room. You just sit and listen to this amazing conversation. That doesn’t sound all that interesting (it didn’t to me, either) but that’s where you’d be mistaken. It is an incredibly compelling story that is science fiction in a pure sense. Which is unsurprising, given who wrote this.
This guy.
You might not recognize the name Jerome Bixby, but you might know some of his work. Not only did he write the story for The Fantastic Voyage and the TV series of the same name, he wrote episodes of both Star Trek and The Twilight Zone. Not just any episodes, either; he wrote It’s a Good Life, about a telepathic kid who torments his family to get his way. That episode was so popular it was remade for Twilight Zone: The Movie and was spoofed in an episode of The Simpsons. His Trek cred is even more awesome – you might not recognize the episodes A Requiem for Methuselah or By Any Other Name, but even non-Trekkies can recognize Mirror Mirror.
It's the one where Evil Spock has a goatee.
It’s difficult to break the “plot” down, as it’s just a conversation. Seriously, here’s the story. John Oldman is retiring from his job as a professor. He invites his friends to a going away party: Harry (a biologist), Dan (an anthropologist), Art (a skeptical archaeologist, played by William Katt) and Edith (a history professor and Christian Literalist). There’s also a historian named Sandy who is in love with John and a student named Linda that Art is currently nailing. Later, they are joined by Will, a psychiatrist.
Apparently taking a "geological survey" with William Kat always gets weird.
John ends up revealing that he is apparently immortal; he has been alive for 14,000 years. He believes that he was Cro-Magnon. The scholars have an intense, heated, passionate evening debating the plausibility of John’s stories and claims, including John possibly being Jesus. Some believe, some don’t. At the end John leaves and everybody has cried at least once. There’s a twist that I thought was the only bad thing about the movie (I’ll get to it). Aside from that 5 minutes or so, it is amazing and you will not be able to stop thinking about it for quite some time. I can’t recap it more without just handing you a screenplay. Watch it and see where it takes you.
I couldn't find a good picture referencing the 2,000 year old man.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot to say, or that I won’t spoil that awful twist. But the thing is, my take on this movie is going to be very different from the average sci-fi fan, and although I don’t mind spoiling the plot, I don’t want to spoil the movie. So if you’d like a chance to see the movie without my interpretation of it, you should stop here and watch it. It’s streaming on Netflix and it’s only 87 minutes. You can read my thoughts on it after. Otherwise, read on…
Gidget is the official Spoilerific LOLcat
So. Now that you have (or have not) watched the movie, allow me to shit my issues all over it. Because when I watched it I didn’t see a fascinating sci-fi movie about a real immortal. What I saw was a psychological horror movie about a charismatic sociopath who ends up emotionally tormenting his victims. Say whaaaaat? That’s right. If you want a condensed version of what it is like to be drawn into Andy Blake’s world of fantasy you have hit the jackpot.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, this film is worth a thousand blog posts
The thing is, pretty much nobody starts out believing him. They comment on a few of his interesting artifacts, joke about his seemingly ageless appearance and ask about his unexplained resignation. He acts unprepared by their questions but pulls out some wine and uses the artifact as an opening to start telling his story. He draws it out, making it seem like the others are pushing him. John claims he has “never done this before” as he begins. He initially uses the cover that he is “writing a book” (which, aside, has always been Andy’s cover to discuss the Others; he’s just actually writing one now).
This is the cover of the first (fanfiction) novel. He's working on the third one now.
It quickly becomes an intellectual game – how could a cave man survive? Is it theoretically possible? It sounds reasonable, until John casually mentions (casually and glibly, as if he was very used to talking about this) that he’d had the chance to sail with Columbus but turned it down because he “wasn’t the adventurous type.” This brings the room to a screeching halt. John says “Pretend it’s science-fiction! Figure it out!” He also says he moves on every ten years or so, when “people notice that I don’t age.” The intellectuals are intrigued. Is he trying to spur debate as a game? Is he crazy? Is this just further into the “novel” previously mentioned? They’re interested to hear more and John begins spinning his tale, covering “the first few thousand years” in a gripping, effective monologue, punctuated by questions from his guests that he answers smoothly and quickly. When confronted with the fact that everything he describes could have come from “any textbook,” John retorts with a neat, impossible to argue loophole that allows the story to continue.
How could I have knowledgeable recall if I didn’t have knowledge? It’s all retrospective. All I can do is integrate my recollections with modern findings.
It was this or a noose.
It sounds reasonable enough, doesn’t it? He touches lightly on the possible existence of God but moves away very quickly from that. When someone asks a question, John turns it back on them, using the question itself as further evidence. The story is fluid enough to raise suspicion, but in response to the obvious question of why? John replies, “A whim. Maybe not such a good idea. I wanted to say goodbye to you as me.” in an earnest and wry way. Making himself very sympathetic. And the movie takes a smoke break for everyone to process, and to allow the love story to grow a little. See, Sandy is in love with John and is obviously hurt that he is leaving. She seems more open to the possibility that he is telling the truth. She confesses her life has been lonely and unhappy and almost begs him to stay, asking if he really believes his story. Perhaps she thinks that it doesn’t matter if he thinks he’s immortal; it doesn’t mean he’s not the same functional, assuredly wonderful man she’s fallen for. He’s just got a little…eccentricity. Or maybe it’s true. Love like this doesn’t happen every day you know.
"I am willing to follow you and love you as long as you'll let me." "Great! I'll suck the life out of you for the next decade!"
The story resumes, each professor asking intelligent, probing questions. Egging John on, sometimes taking him through parts of it themselves as they air their skepticism. He keeps his eyes slightly downcast, unless he is making pointed, intense eye contact with people. He talks about his travels, his discoveries, eventually claiming he had studied with Buddha. Dan openly wishes it was true.
It's all in my head...and now it's all in yours.
The movie takes another break as Will – the psychiatrist, whom Art called in – arrives. (He’s also Tom Smykowski from Office Space for those playing “That Guy” bingo at home.) And then John scores the first open victory: Dan, who seems the most deeply moved by the story, says this:
There’s absolutely no way in the whole world for John to prove his story to us. Just like there’s no way for us to disprove it. No matter how outrageous we think it is, no matter how highly trained some of us think we are, there is absolutely no way to disprove it. Our friend is either a cave man, a liar or a nut. So while we’re thinking about that, why don’t we just…go with it? I mean, hell, who knows. He might jolt us into believing it. Or we might jolt him back to reality.
In addition to The Greatest American Hero, this movie contains The Candyman and the Doctor from Enterprise.
So, that’s two that he has under his spell, Sandy and Dan. The story resumes, as Will takes a different approach by operating from the assumption that the story is true (which is a fairly standard shrink move with delusional patients). John continues, eyes darting as he gauges everyone’s reactions. He’s sometimes patronizing, sometimes slick, often humble. And it is apparent that he is slowly making inroads to having them believe. Dan even elaborates and supports John’s story. Unprompted.
Dude, you are making this so much easier.
Will keeps hammering on the negative aspects – the atrocities John must have seen, how many people he must have lost. They are interrupted as movers from a charity comes to take everything John owns except the couch. He says “I’ll get more. It’s the only way to move.” (Another aside – guess who moves like this regularly? Ditching almost everything and stepping into a new life/identity?), but then it’s back to Will asking about death, guilt, families, pain.
Funny, they cast such a cheerful looking actor for such a grumpy character.
Finally Will suggests that John might be something like a “psychic vampire” who “feeds” off the “life force” of others. He puts several modifiers on this (e.g. it’s subconscious), but what he is suggesting is that Will is telling this story in order to “feed” on their attention. Which is exactly what I believe is happening. However, Will goes off the rails and pulls a gun, rather dispassionately asking if that would prove John was mortal. It’s intense and sudden – but then it comes out that Will’s wife had died the day before. Will leaves for a while, ashamed. Though we do see that the gun was unloaded.
Huh. Guess he's full of BS too.
John uses this to reaffirm his story, behaving aggrieved and commenting that Will was right to strike back at him. This takes some of the sting (and power) from Will’s arguments and casts Will as the unstable one, allowing John to be sympathetic again. Almost a victim, really. The adrenaline rush and subsequent come-down makes his audience more open, more bonded; they were already a group of close friends and this is just drawing them closer. The story goes on, with more enthusiastic participation. For the first time, John contradicts himself – that he had told one person about his immortality previously. They jump on the contradiction but John dismisses it as “he forgot” and moves on easily.
...And I'm still warming up, yo. Just wait.
Then comes the big reveal. The topic of God and religion come up and John dances around the topic, almost taunting them. It is obvious that he is building to yet another big reveal. He holds out until the rest are begging and pleading him to tell them. And finally, John comes out with it. He was Jesus.
Of course he was.
Edith is offended by the blasphemy of his suggestion. She is extremely devout, but the very fact that she is so reactionary indicates that she has started to believe John is telling the truth. Another victory; her protestations only seem to feed his story. John is so passionate, so heartfelt that it is difficult not to be swept up in it. He was only trying to share what he had learned from the Buddha. He used meditation to slow his respiration and appear dead when he was crucified, but he was spotted slipping out of his grave. And it snowballed from there. Simple, elegant, logical.
Look at their expressions. Shock. Wonder. Devotion.
Another aside from the cult-recovery memory book here – there is quite a bit of discussion of cross-cultural mythology and history to bolster John’s claims, especially here. This is something Andy did regularly – he used to joke that we were members of the “Secrets of the World” club. Many of his versions of Bible stories were equally simple, elegant and logical. We all loved hearing the “true” stories behind Bible legends. And it is obvious that almost all of John’s guests believe him at this point in the story, sometimes against their own will. Edith is heartbroken and angry, Art is reluctant, Dan is almost reverent.
Pic unrelated.
There is some fascinating deconstruction of Christianity in general here, which is worthwhile in and of itself (especially to an Atheist). Around this point, Will comes back, insisting that he doesn’t believe and that John still needs help, but he couldn’t stay away. Which is what always is the case with a charismatic speaker (like Andy). You believe even though you don’t want to, and you can’t make yourself turn away because it’s so goddamn fascinating, and seems so fucking plausible.
He's right there, so earnest. So *reasonable*
We miss a few minutes here as Will is brought up to speed on the whole Jesus thing. He keeps pushing, saying he believes that John is perfectly sane and trying to get him to say why he’s spinning this story. When John takes a few things to his car with Sandy, the rest discuss, ruling out drugs and certain types of insanity. Will seems to be the only holdout on believing. Even skeptical Art is wavering at this point and Edith seems unable to cope – she doesn’t participate much, other than to weakly defend the Bible.
This is actually a pretty atheist film.
When John returns he puts on Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, 2nd movement as “mood music.” The firelight, the music, the lateness of the hour…John speaks softly about the Sermon on the Mount. The feel becomes very intense, very raw, incredibly intimate as Edith breaks down in tears, her faith shattering. I cannot capture the intensity of this moment and I honestly think this scene deserved an Oscar nomination.
Ellen Crawford perfectly captured the experience of hitting a tipping point of faith. And breaking.
At Edith’s anguish Will turns on the lights, furious. The light reveals that almost everyone is in tears. Will is not. He makes John turn off the music and calls him out for his story. The camera catches everyone’s raw, open emotions, all of them believing, but struggling with the weight of what they have learned. Suspicious. Hurt. Dazed. Frightened, though it’s impossible to tell if they are afraid it is true or afraid it’s not. Will demands that John admit that his story is a fraud, or else he will see to it that John is committed. There is a long thoughtful pause before John drops the bomb. “It was just a story.”
LOL J/K
The looks of betrayal and horror on everyone’s faces is powerful. They are enraged. Unable to process why someone would lie like this. Glibly, easily, John explains how he came up with the story – Dan noticed the artifact, Edith said he didn’t age, Art gave him a book on early man…they’d asked about religion…He says he ran the idea past them, they took the bait and he went for it, but he took it too far. “You were playing my game! And I was playing yours!” He’s laughing about it as they cry, seemingly energized by their rage while making it seem like they somehow invited this.
Hate the game. Not the player.
Art storms out, taking his cute little ingenue with him. The others are far more shaken and slow. Except for Sandy, who still believes him completely, calling him a liar for refuting his own tale, going outside with him to flirt and giggle as the rest gather their coats and wits. Edith and Harry come out, trying to be lighthearted and teasing him a little. But before they go, Edith kisses him on the cheek and touches him gently. Reverently.
Worshipful.
Here’s the thing about Edith that we don’t see: her life has completely changed. Forever. She’s a Christian Literalist. Her life was that religion, and now she cannot believe. Not the way she could, not ever again. Her entire worldview, which is the basis for her identity, her self and everything she believed in is damaged. She might find a way to deal with it that allows her to return to her faith, but it will never again be the same. Further, she believes in her heart that John was Jesus. That is not going to just fade away after a good night’s sleep. I can’t say how she would react to John if she saw him again – but from my experience I’d put the odds 70/30 in favor of her doing anything she can to help/support/be with him. Meanwhile, Harry seems far less agitated, but it is still clear that he is hurting as well. Harry too will have many sleepless nights. Dan, on the other hand, openly says he’s not sure what happened there that night. Though he doesn’t outright say he believes, he does invite John to contact him.
Check out the intensity of John's "I will."
And then there’s Will, and the terrible fucking twist. Because as he’s leaving, he overhears John and Sandy are talking about other name’s he’s gone by and realizes that John was his own father. And John immediately confirms it – and seconds later Will keels over from a fatal heart attack.
DEAAAAAAAAAAATH!
Once you know the twist there is just TONS of foreshadowing. Like how Will “barely knew” his father, that he has a heart condition, that he’s not as young as he used to be…there’s more, but you get the idea. My problem with this isn’t that it “proves” that John is telling the truth. That’s fine (although I think the ambiguity makes it more powerful – for obvious reasons). What I find so fucktarded is how abrupt and cheesy it is. It’s just…it’s so weak compared to the power of the rest of the film. As this screenplay was literally completed on Jerome Bixby’s deathbed (he had worked on it since the sixties), it kind of makes me wonder if this scene was incomplete. The foreshadowing makes it clear that it was a part of the story, but the tone and execution are so different from the rest of the film.
Seriously. Whether you like my interpretation or not, just pretend these few minutes didn't happen and that Will stormed out right after Art.
Anyway, after the ambulance takes Will’s body and so on, John gets in the truck to drive away. Sandy looks after him longingly as he starts to drive off…and he stops the truck and opens the door for her. Ta-da! Somebody’s got a new full-time caretaker!
I may as well chuck my entire life and follow you.
And that’s where the credits roll. Like I said, my take on things is deeply personal (and fucked up), but this is a very personal story. All the characters who were in that room was changed by what they heard. For the rest of their lives. Well, except for Will, but I daresay the rest of his life was pretty dramatically altered. No matter what you think of this movie – my take on it or otherwise – you will think because of this movie. Your life probably won’t change, but it’ll give you something to ponder.
Out of Context 
Well. No wonder you had such a reaction to the film. A friend of mine reacted the same way to the Ya-Yas: too effing close to reality for her.
I have to say it does sound like a fascinating study of the dynamics of that kind of person and how he relates/manipulates/controls people around him. It sounds almost… casual, like an afterthought. “Hey, I’ve got all these people here, what if I ran this game on them?” And no doubt after this party broke up and he and poor Susan climbs into the truck, he found another group to do something different-but-similar to.
Hmmm… Refer all those with questions about your experience to this film. 🙂
It was incredibly validating to see the process played out – and on obviously intelligent characters. Because the idea is that people who believe crazy bullshit like this are stupid or unintelligent. But we’re not. It’s honestly the smart ones, the ones who are likely to question blind faith, who get drawn in.
That’s an interesting piece of this: the idea that very intelligent people are more vulnerable to this kind of con. Was just reading a story about a victim of domestic violence — she was a trial attorney, and she said that for years she figured that her education/experience/intelligence/etc. equipped her to deal with his behavior, which in the end nearly cost her her life. Do you think that’s what it is? Combined with the con man’s ability to respond on the level of his victims — intelligent, detailed, reasonable?
Absolutely. If you look into cult recovery networks, it is people who are highly intelligent and creative that are at risk, often in part because they think they’re “too smart” to fall for stuff.
I loved this film for exactly what your speaking about but I saw it as a film that plays on “Possibilism” the power of this film did come, as you suggested, from ambiguity from not knowing. No one in that room could disprove or prove his story correct which made it engaging, beautiful and terrifying…for I too can be immortal. What was it that 12 Monkeys suggested? I’m paraphrasing I’m sure…psychology is our new religion they decide who is living in reality and who is not…
I just watched the movie. Ditto to what you said.
Hi Abbey,
I found your post while searching opinions of this film, having just watched it … when I really enjoy a film or am prompted into deep thought by something I immediately get online and have a look for others’ opinions. It should come as no surprise that I studied archaeology (major), anthropology and history at university and really enjoyed this film. Like you, I found the final plot twist of Will being John’s son terrible, like something you might find at the end of a Goosebumps book from the 90s! Otherwise, I was captivated by the story and the characters reactions, particularly Dan’s. Thanks for posting about it, I really want to read the book now -no doubt it will be a wonderful journey into my own mind!
Chelle
I enjoyed reading your post! I also came across it after seeing a disappointing amount of feedback on Rotten Tomatoes (not all that surprising, I guess). My favorite part of the movie was its ability to allow the viewer to take it as it came, its message wasn’t forceful, and for as crazy as it all seemed, it was kind of exciting to be just as captivated as his friends were. It was an hour and a half movie and it only took place in one room and had no “pop” action, and I was still into the movie (although after the jesus stuff, it became less so, being the climax and such). I liked your theory of the movie as a psychological thriller, but when I watched it, I was pretty much on board with Dan in terms of his being able to accept/understand the message, but not accept it, after all it is a movie. As for the ending, I loved the plot twist. But, I agree that the acting/writing was poor once most everyone left and made me tilt my head when the credits started rolling (thanks for the history part there about Bixby). Psychological or Science Fiction, this movie made me think, and I love that in movies. (Like when you leave the theater and you are still thinking about it as intensely as when you were watching it).
As for the ending, I completely agree with you that it was underdeveloped and most likely due to Bixby’s death. I did enjoy the idea, although it wasn’t really necessary, due to the film’s already “impossible” scenario.
I will likely recommend it to friends who don’t mind a good discussion, and I will probably leave it out of conversations with my Christian friends due to the chance that they might tense up (understandably).
Thanks,
Joaquin
I think John to be the symbolic archetype of Jungian racial unconscious or primal unconsciousness whose mind therefore is the cesspool of all that happened on the earth since man happened to live in the caves. Other characters similarly are the angles from which man has learnt to look at and discuss about their relationship with the transcendental realities of life that somehow begin to take the shape of myths travelling from generation to generation ad infinitum undergoing additions,subtractions and alterations inviting our beliefs and doubts in accordance with the level of our consciousness.
Wow! I took the plot totally differently; not that he was some kind of sociopath playing with people’s minds (he wasn’t as the admittedly awkward ending proves) but that he finally had to back off the telling of truth because people couldn’t handle it. The cognitive dissonance was so great that as you point out, their lives were being shattered by the implications. Makes me wonder how people may react if the (possible) truth of ET existence on Earth comes out. I’ve been reading the Richard Dolan book, “After Disclosure” recently and although I think he writes a pretty good scenario of the President’s speech, after that he loses imagination on what may be shattering implications, if people react to that like they did to John’s revelations.
As an atheist, I loved the part where he discusses how, possibly, a religion and fable gets started and how it goes off a rail and out of control so easily.
I’ve watched this movie perhaps 7 times now, and I can honestly say I wish I’d written it. I like to think I could have written a better ending, but I’m at a loss as to how.
This is one of my favourite films and its so nice to read what you though of it. I didn’t have any problem with John being Will’s father when I watched it, but now that you mention it, I do agree it would have been even more powerful if it didn’t end that way. Oh well, I loved it and really enjoyed your review 🙂 Thanks Abigail
Great review and take on the movie.
Just one thing: not an atheist film, at all. The only thing it attacks is the dogma of religions (and by extension, religions themselves). In no way does it imply that there is no God, just that the God that is told via Christianity is false.
It’s an adogmatic film, a skeptic film, which is pretty well-demonstrated by the fact that he destroys people’s lives by bringing them a new dogma, a new understanding of the world provided by someone else. It both pokes at the idea that people believe stupid stories and tries to make us believe a not-as-stupid-as-it-looks one.
I didn’t mind the ending, probably because I wanted to believe John myself. And that’s where the most powerful part of the film is in my opinion: we *want* to believe science-fiction and religion. Will’s death isn’t actually proof, but John’s knowledge of Will’s life makes it unreasonable to figure John had obtained the info otherwise. John’s story can’t be disproven, just like the existence of a God (or Russell’s teapot) can’t be disproven. We want dogma, we search for some explanation for holes in every story, even if it’s mostly conjecture, even when it threatens to break our worldview.
Thanks btw, I wouldn’t have figured it out without your review.
Keep up the good work.
Forgot to add that:
“Piety is not what the lessons bring to people, it’s the mistake they bring to the lessons.”
John Oldman
Just watched, movie, googled it, found your review.
Very nice, you really nailed it.
Mike
I thought the big twist would be that Sandy was immortal too. When he started to tell his story, she immediately had a ‘Woah, you don’t want to do that, John” look on her face. She asked, BY FAR, the fewest questions. And when someone mentioned Beethoven, she said with a laugh, “He spent most of his time laying facedown on the floor, in front of his legless piano, surrounded by orange peels and apple cores.” Plus, they had had a conversation about love, and he said that it can’t be forever, and she had such an enigmatic look on her face… I just KNEW that would be a reveal, right up to the point where the credits rolled. I still am not convinced it wasn’t supposed to be in the screenplay, it just seems so obvious to me. But, maybe I read ‘The Boat of a Million Years’ one too many times.
That’s an awesome point of view, and actually viable. It also explains why she is still so willing to love him after ‘finding out’ that he’s possibly immortal.
Great review & comments. A powerful film.
The great thing about the film is that it’s so intimate that the viewer is pretty much another person in the room, you become part of the film as it happens.
The psychopath theory, that’s the only other alternative. It’s either believing he’s jesus or that he’s just messing with your mind… I’ll take the second option.
About the “people sitting and talking in a room” genre… one of my favorites I’d say. If you like The Man From Earth I bet you’ll also like “12 Angry Men” and “Rope” (if there’s other films like these, please let me know!).
Keep up the great work.
-Wil
At the end the girl says to John something along the lines of “You’ve never seen a grown child die?”- As in verifying his story. And sure, “You’re my father?!?” and heart-attack is uber-cheesy; but its used as the validation of him actually being the 14,000 year old man. Could there be way more original, and seemingly better, ways of providing that verification? I’d like to think so. No disagreement there.
But that’s some HUGE leap of faith into thin air for the manipulative sociopath part. If your taking the fact that he is 14,000 years old as confirmed then there’s absolutely no reason to doubt the rest of his story; unless your just taking him saying “I was making it up” as the truth, and the rest of his story as a lie. But that line is… taking an incredibly artistic license with the material.
His name as the Wills dad’s name. Knowing the name of the dog. Knowing the name of the mom. Calling him “chilly willy” and “your always cold” and the girl saying the “Never saw your grown child die?” I would say is all fairly solidly confirming him as being the 14,000 year old man.
Now I wouldn’t doubt that a 14,000 year old man would have “sociopathic tendencies”- all experiences would have happened quite a few times and quieted down emotional responses to almost nil. Not to mention just plain getting used to every around you dying every 20-30-50…90 years as the lifespan improves. I think “sociopath” would be the appropriate approximation of the adapted mental state in that condition. Not sociopath as getting glee and pleasure from others pain (that’s not what that means) but a down-regulation of emotional response and a lack of empathy.
But all of that aside- and not seeing any of your posts or life-story other than this one- I would go out on a limb and say that you’ve had some relationship with a “sociopath”/con-man? I don’t see how else you could pull that interpretation out of thin air like that. I mean, sure, that COULD be the case. He could have made up the entire story, still be 14,000 or however many years old, and STILL be Will’s father, and have told the truth that he was just messing with them all the whole time.
But I think the more logical spot would be that “I made it all up” would be the fake story and the rest the real story. As in… “damnit, I knew I shouldn’t have told anyone this story. Just make my silent goodbye, leave them wondering, and get the hell out of dodge” sure… I made it all up. Go home now people. Leave me be. Let me get my next 10 year spurt.
Oh, I certainly agree with your take. As I said at the beginning of the review, this film affected me differently because of my previous relationship with a sociopathic con man. That’s the reason I wrote the review – because I have a different take on the film than the average viewer. And as a film lover, I enjoy finding new ways to look at a movie.
Actually on further reflection I think that would have made a much better ending without taking away from the movie at all. Turn it into a “The Usual Suspects” type ending and him just sending them for a mind trip the whole time. The chic can start crying “Are you really Jesus??” … “Umm no. And I’m not 14,000 years old either. Really people?!?”
I enjoyed it though. Regardless of having to shut my mind off about then justifying how someone could physically live that long. I mean… even accepting that part we’re talking about starting in 10,000 b.c. and no one burned him at the stake, cut his head off, drawn-and-quartered. Lost a limb. Fell off a mountain. Got stuck in a tar-pit. Eaten by something. Hit by a bus. The whole “got chased off by the angry tribes who thought I was stealing their souls…” There’s only so many times that’s gonna happen without some major death and dismemberment involved.
I like the concept but yea, being the dad and giving a heart-attack to his son did just about fit as an ending with the rest of that in the mix. I’m glad I was able to stop my mind from going there long enough to enjoy the movie, but now accepting your view… if that was reality and they owned it as an ending I think I actually would have preferred that. Or they could have just done a bit more work on the ending and how he lives through something more than just disease and no scarring. Like a bullet to the head if not some limb-regrowth stories in the mix.
But even the head-trip ending is screwed up by their plot. He’s not a sociopath. Pops into my head when he heard that Will’s mother died… and he goes running out in concern without a moments thought in an emotional and empathetic reaction. Or… maybe he’s just really good and was setting it up all along and wanted to tug on those heart-strings to entice Will to come back later. There we go. Then truly make the ending a “wtf…. no, really?? no… wait, what…wtf!” moment for the audience.
Then there’s a sequel and turns into the Saw series. Hollywood pitch: check! There’s the rumor that “Aliens” was pitched as “Jaws in space” and that was that. So…. The Man From Earth meets Saw.
Sorry… bored 🙂
I think it was actually a loop-film!
When he says he was Jesus (basically John) he is creating a magnificent story, just like the Bible does. But John says that Bible was exaggerated about a few small ‘lessons’ about living life.
That is what this film also does. It says a few small lessons about living life. And leaves the viewer with a choice to have faith. Just like Bible.
There, that’s a loop.
So, the film was not really a ‘true story’ or ‘believable story’ about this caveman. It was about an idea that John proposes in the film. That is the key to view this film, in my view.
Wow… such a great review and such great comments from all the readers.
Makes me wish I could sit with you guys around a fireplace, drinking Johny Walker Green and discussing the movie and it’s implications.
Its implications. Bad english…
Some fantastic analysis on this page – particularly liked Ryan’s hypothesis that Sandy was another immortal. This would seem to account for her willingness to accept John’s story with little skepticism (you’d expect more from a historian, right!?) and her commitment to loving him in spite of it (c’mon…I mean if a partner of mine revealed something like this, I’d be hella pissed…).
My hunch is that what ultimately motivates John to reveal the truth “for the first time” is boredom with his existence; I think he fleetingly implies his boredom, but perhaps up until this point he had withheld the facts to protect the psychological integrity of others around him (I mean he seems like a pretty decent/compassionate bloke). Therefore when their emotional trauma becomes too great, he realises he has transgressed what he considers permissible as an agent with morals, and relents via his “End of the line!” quasi-twist.
A criticism I have is the lack of compassion John exemplifies towards his “son” Will after the latter’s heart attack. I concede that he may have had hundreds of offspring, and perhaps watched many of them die, but even so I still felt he should have been a bit sadder about the whole thing.
As Breyzh mentioned, “Piety is not what the lessons bring to people, it’s the mistake they bring to the lessons.” – John Oldman
^This quote truly towered above the rest of the dialogue in this film. It captures such an elegantly simple flaw with religion that most of us take for granted: that the benign moral teachings and existential guidance offered by religion need not be attributed to the religion in and of itself, but to the humanistic teachings it embodies. Teachings, as elucidated in the film, that should be attributed to human wisdom (ie from the Buddha) rather than divine guidance.
If you’re reading this blog and thinking about posting a comment, DO IT! Keep this discussion alive!
-Jack.
Great review that attracted some notable comments. Thank you for both.
I was recommended to watch this film by a dear friend of mine, who thought John Oldman and I have similar issues in life. Not that I consider myself an immortal by any means, however, the blessing or curse of witnessing events in abundance that makes you age, is something we both share.
There is another interesting phenomenon, that came to mind while watching the film and later reading the comments, no one seem to have mentioned the ‘meme’ Richard Dawkins wrote about. To me, that’s a good attempt to provide an explanation to the spreading of information and knowledge, even to the birth of myths and religion going back thousands of years.
Also, I could imagine a scenario, whereby a person reaches death and another person continues where that person left it, catching up with all the unfinished business, continuing research, etc. Of course, without being conscious of the ‘continuation’ itself.
All in all, interesting and thought-provoking film.
– Good point about the possibility of Sandy being immortal, too. It would make sense.
hmm i’m a bit disappointed that none of the comments here find it odd that not one of them thought of asking John to speak other languages or looked more “realistically” skeptical about the whole thing.
Big thanks to the author for writing this fascinating interpretation and encouraging discussion – there’s a lot of interesting opinions out there.
But I’d like to take a look at this movie as a cinema product, disregarding major explanations of what happened (as others have summed up, the film is strongly ambiguous in the way of possible interpretations).
What we have here is a pretentious quasi-intellectual exploitation film with incredibly low production value (at times almost pornographic-looking in its plastic sets and goofy acting), and all the popular-science erudition-tickle you can fit into an hour in a half (which is to say, a whole lot) – it’s an amazingly entertaining video kitsch artifact that (in my interpretation) ever so subtly, and, IMHO, consciously, undermines its own pretentious seriousness in a brilliant satiric gesture.
In addition to its visual qualities, look at it with all its absurdity and ambiguity (which start to make sense now as a device to undermine the rational nature of the whole setup).
Pay attention to how its perception bounces back and forth between a cheesy fantasy parable, pretentious intellectual’s popular philosophy/general knowledge showcase, zany sci-fi movie, and even takes off in a direction of a Saw-esque psychological mindfuck.
Notice how the majority of the heroes, never mind the occasional flipping-out, seem to be so expert at dropping dank one-liners about history and religion, all meticulously arranged into a dense barrage of popular philosophy tropes, but completely fail to meaningfully explore the relevant philosophical issues, and pay little attention, or even remain glaringly blind, to the obvious epistemological implications of their own discourse. At some point in the film the screenwriter even lets one of the heroes to whip out the lame “can’t prove it, but can’t disprove it either” argument, disregarding the cherished Russell’s teapot in a mechanical move to justify suspension of disbelief.
Al of this leaves the viewers with a fine example of Poe’s law in action – in fact, here’s another pair of conflicting interpretations: at this rate it’s impossible to discern whether the film amounts to a half-baked try at a serious we’re-smarter-than-you-in -our-discussion-club conversation film or a skillful subversion of the same.
Don’t get me wrong – all I’ve said was not meant to question or diminish the importance and viability of all the philosophical conundrums and sci-fi premises utilized in the film, nor to undermine the legitimacy of their artistic representation. It’s very good that this film sparks discussion and gets recognized by interested audiences, and I’ve greatly enjoyed wathcing it and reading all the different opinions.
Instead, what I meant to say is that this film is probably not meant to be taken seriously as a worthwile intellectual product. In fact, it benefits greatly from taking it at face value – a trendy atheist movie reminding of an intelectually hyped-up version of Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back. And, at the end of the day, we should all just love it for a cheap and shameless, but lovingly crafted piece of quasi-intellectual exploitation that it is.
Peace!
During the movie I did not get the feeling John was a sociopath for these reasons:
1 The scene where he deals with a student over the phone, and give her a pass in his class even though she got a D, because she was a med school prospect. If you enjoy inflicting pain, forcing a student to take your class over is the best way. I’ve seen students cry and beg because they failed to pass a needed class. This scene clearly established John was not a sadist.
2 The fact that John had known these people for 10 years, was liked and trusted among them enough so that he was in line to be Chairman of his Department. It takes quite a bit to become Chair of a Department. For John to end all those 10 years by spending one night fucking over all the people he knew best does not seem a likely scenario.
Overall I liked the movie, but I agree that there are flaws. But I think that for a screenwriter it is very difficult to fulfill a great idea.
These are definitely good arguments for John not being a sadist. But they don’t preclude him from being a sociopath. Sociopathy is just lack of empathy — it can lead to a desire to inflict pain, but not automatically. It often makes having close relationships very difficult, but it doesn’t completely rule them out. So John could definitely still be a sociopath. Although, it’s more likely that he’d be what’s called a “pro-social psychopath.” (See this FASCINATING talk given by a neuroscientist on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzqn6Z_Iss0). We often automatically associate the word “psychopath” with sadism and murder. And although they can go hand in hand, they don’t always, as is the case with pro-social individuals. Psychopathy fits more for John than sociopathy because sociopathy is characterized by social disconnect and psychopathy is characterized by charisma, which John has in spades.
Now, I don’t actually think he’s a biology psychopath. The more interesting conversation for me, personally, is the idea that John could develop the mindset / dulled empathy of a psychopath purely through his experiences. (Assuming he actually is 14,000 years old.) It kind of depends on your outlook. If you think that thousands and thousands of years of experience with human suffering and emotion would kind of “level out” your perception of those things — rendering them monotonous and uncomplex — then you’d probably find it easy to believe that John would develop a kind of environmental psychopathy. He’s seen it all. Regular human lives are blips on a radar to him, and so individual human emotions are even smaller. It’s not a big deal to play with people’s faith and such, like he does in the movie.
In fact, I might not even fully blame him for developing this mode of living. Because imagine the alternative. You live thousands and thousands of years, experience all that, and through it all, you keep those emotional receptors fully open. You feel every loss as deeply as if you had only 75-ish years to live and love. Maybe over the huge span of your life, each individual loss dulls, but each new one is felt just as deeply in the moment. Same thing with joy and anger and such. It would be exhausting. You’ve witnessed countless tragedies. You’ve seen “them” make “the same mistakes over and over again.” Chances are, your brain would automatically try to protect you. You would naturally disengage with these things over time. So you would have to actively fight to feel everything as deeply as a “mortal” would.
My actual opinion is that John operates somewhere in between those two extremes — not completely disconnected, but definitely perceiving emotion on a different, less vivid level than mortals.
Nice comments. Watched it for the first time yesterday. Amazing movie. I was drawn in. I wish it would continue for hours. It is bloody incomplete.
There is one big flaw. The Biologist is so DUMB. Guys, just make a cut in his forearm and watch the scar. As a comment said above, the people in the room were not asking the right questions. (by the way the language issue was reasonable explained)
They dodged the hard science facts way too easily. Bloody take cell samples and make DNA analysis.
There is ONE BIG issue that is so interesting and wasn’t discussed about : Can we afford to discover WHY he is immortal? Anyone read Barjavel “Le grand secret”?
I could see a sequel with the big pharma involved. But the script should be TOP NOTCH.
Actually the movie cries for a sequel.
The movie didn’t say John had instant regeneration. A cut would probably be a cut until it scabs over and heals in a few days, Since John was leaving that night (or the next morning), it wouldn’t have proven anything.
They wanted to take cell samples, but John refused, remember? They didn’t insist, but they were going with the assumption that he was just spinning a story for most of the movie.
I’m also glad they avoided the language issue, because nothing would have dropped my suspension of disbelief harder than hearing him speak latin or any other language with an English accent.
I think one thing that the film does brilliantly is that it’s simply going back to the oldest ways of telling stories. In the end, it’s a group of friends who end up sharing a meal, even gathering around a campfire of sorts, and just listening to a friend make them think and question their own views in life by telling a great story, which only later turns out to be true.
In a sense how I see the film is John is going back to what humanity was in the beginning, a group of old friends, and a member of the next generation, all unique and specialists in their own ways of belief, thinking and behaviour. A elder male psychologist and a young female student, an anthropologist and a christian literalist, a trying to be funny biologist and a skeptical serious archaeologist, and of course a historian.
The fact that John and Sandy are both knowledgeable about history implies a connection of understanding, the fact that Sandy would have studied history would let her be all too aware of how going through all that history has done would make her more understanding of John and his predicament. He always mentions moving on, never really gaining permanent friends, or family for that matter, always having to leave other people he admits he cares about, simply because of his nature being beyond their understanding.
Now he finally meets a group of intellectuals, each with their own field of knowledge and their own individual families, genders, personalities, and beliefs. He’s finally met a humanity that could possibly handle his true nature. And what does he do? He tells a story, probably one of the oldest things humanity’s ever done, telling stories from one generation to another, and not just a story about lessons of morality, they’re in their too, but they capture the great wonder of human history, and what it is to be human, to the degree that even John’s humanity is questioned.
Here, John comes face to face with his history up to this point, he confronts the parts of himself he always held back from others but now can talk about to people who might be able to understand him and not turn him away from them. His longing to reconnect, to tell the wisdom of his years of long life, to confront the doubts he’s had about himself, or what humanity knows, its’ past, its’ present and its future. He tells them the story he’s never been able to really tell to before. He’s finally being who he was always meant to be and the story is told in the only way it can really be told, as an orally told story involving a group of friends during a final meal, or final supper perhaps, before he leaves this life as a teacher of history, and goes on his next life journey, but now has someone who loves him and doesn’t reject him.
The fact that John could be making up all of this story, that he could’ve known things about Will from simply looking at his personal records at the university. The fact that the story may have been made up on the spot is always possible. But again that’s the problem with any story, it could be true, or it could be fiction. Like any story it depends on the storyteller and how its interpreted by those that hear and add to that story. Thus having no flashbacks to a prehistoric life, or any other periods of history, adds to the power of the storytelling alone. Sure there are musical riffs suggesting certain periods of history in the score. But in the end, it’s about being human, wanting acceptance, love, to fit into a society, to be someone who can teach others, and perhaps the next generation, to tell them his life story before he leaves, so they’re left with a gift that makes them think about what it is to be human or to be a man from earth…
Brilliant write-up.
When they started talking about the Bible and which figure he would be my first thought was Lazarus.
Correction: John was not Will’s father; he was Will’s PROFESSOR, long ago, back at Harvard. Will remembers the name John says he had used, and John then remembers some key details from Will’s life.
Actually, John WAS Will’s father. That was very clearly spelled out.
I have a problem with this. John knew this all of the time. He wouldn’t have confronted Will in such an awful way if he really would have been as developed as we assume, as a human being. I wouldn’t…but then again I am much older than John. Anyway, what an asshole, knowing of his condition! Not enough empathy or understanding? The end ruined the movie completely!
John had taught one of the male teachers many decades before when that man (I don’t recall his name) was in john’s class at a different school.
Could we speculate: according to biblical times there were people who lived 800 years or more. If a small group of these people exist they would be more able to understand the overall goals of those in power and would possibly be able to take advantage of their adversaries to gain power and a form of stableness as we continue to survive in a world that seems to be apocalyptic, but so far “somehow” remains in tact. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL9x6l6KEmE
This movie brings up a very interesting view on religion and the amount of faith that people put onto it. Edith relies on Christianity and the bible for so much of her everyday life values that anything said against it just tears at her very being. Especially when John says that he was Jesus. This is destroying for Edith, she has based her entire life off of the fact that Jesus is god’s son and that he was sent down to teach his ways. When John contradicts that fact in her life, she doesn’t know what to do with herself anymore, she just breaks down and starts crying. John, however, doesn’t believe in a religion, he just flows along with life trying to do the right thing and just be a nice loving person. This belief was influenced heavily by the Buddha. But he doesn’t actually need or want to rely on a religion to tell him how to be a good person, he just wants to do it. Also, he has lived through the rise and fall of many religions, and even unintentionally started his own. He saw that one religion is no different than the other, they are all just a set of rules of how to be a kind, functioning person of society. He doesn’t like religion, in fact he called them all “hogwash.” From his personal experience the beliefs he tried to spread just became way over exaggerated. All he tried to do was re-spread the the teachings of the Buddha and give everyone a kind and loving set of rules they should follow for a meaningful life. However, just like the childhood game of telephone, he does one thing and the story spreads and as it spreads from one person to the next the story changes. Eventually the story has been spread so far by word of mouth alone that the original story has been so altered that no one even knows what is actually true and what has been modified. John doesn’t actually want people to focus on religion, but he doesn’t want people to not have it either. All he wants is for people to be kind and loving, if that means having a religion in their life to do so then by all means use that. He just doesn’t want people to focus so much on the story and whether god does or does not exist. As long as people are nice to one another and can truly make others around them happy, he will be satisfied. That’s what he tried to do when he became “The Christ.”
Sorry in advance for possible grammar mistakes, English is not my native language but I’m 100% sure you will smoothly understand everything that I wrote below.
I’ve just finished watching movie. I guess…. Well, I don’t know really.. I think I like it. Actually, I DID like it pretty much but I knew there was something wrong with it and I just couldn’t figure it out what it was so I googled and came up here.
So… First of all: No tension. No tension in way it is usually delivered to us in movies and that matter kept me confused throughout whole movie. Such a shocking words came from John’s mouth with such an incredibly blank (both audio and video) production and acting calmness. It was so strange to me that I actually thought it was all about bad acting skills problem but later on, as movie flows, I dropped that out as possibility. Definitely.
So, firstly, I’m kind of disappointed with fact that no one actually explained in comments what that phone call with John’s student about her class grade was actually all about. That scene just happened, they talked, he said to her that she passed (even she actually got ‘D’) and… that’s it? What the hell producer wanted to tell us with that scene?
Also, I have strong feeling that intensity of John’s “I will” has some deeper meaning. It seems like Dan was person who actually believed John’s story the most, he was only person that asks John does he has any destination in mind although he already knew he will get no answer on that question and (most importantly) he got that extra intense ‘I WILL’ reply from John at the ending scene… This simply has to mean something more.
Apropos all that about John’s and Dan’s relationship I think that has to have something about ‘Jesus recognized that one guy in crowd who actually believed him and *HE WILL* contact him for further teaching him’.
Also, they asked him bunch of logical questions that most of us would do but, as far as I remember, no one asks him more precisely about that very moment in his 35th year of life when he noticed first signs of not growing older. Maybe It’s just me but I would bomb him with all kind of questions about that period.
His story about guy he met and found out he also doesn’t age is incomplete. Come one, that topic is huge and we got just few words about it…
Next thing, Sandy is definitely acting different from others in that room. And I doubt ‘actor just act that way’, there is something producer meant to tell us through her. She took all those shocking informations about her loved John pretty calmly like she already knew whole story (but her solo frames with him outside of the house prove us she actually didn’t know).
About ending, If we take simply what we saw in the ending (from moment Dr. Will came outside until the moment John entered car) – there is no space for speculation about whether he is telling story from imagination or he is telling true story about himself – He was telling true story about himself. Period. This was not ‘Inception-kind-of-ending’ movie ending where producer intentionally left us with open space for us to figure out whatever we want.
Guys, this movie is so interesting and unique and I still have strong feeling that we’re all missing something big here so please comment whatever comes to your mind and don’t let this blog die.
Cheers.
yes stefan, i agree with you, there’s must something big that we’re all missing in this story. i hope someone can answer this.
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hai abigail my name is dean, i really like your theory about this film, and as you said your husband is a scientist and you is a psychology, and i would like to ask you about thing name “Dajjal” is islam story, can you make a research about it? i really like to hear a good theory from you about this.
Thank you abigail,
you really a good person.