Review of The Man from Earth (2007) by Rohith N — 21 Jun 2011
Loved this. Great and highly intelligent low budget SF. It starts looking like a rubbish film - the dubbing is bad (this comes back from time to time too) and the picture grainy, but then sharply veers into an excellent and engaging narrative, all focused in one room, about the mystery of this one individual.
You could liken it to 12 Angry Men in a sense, as what they are doing is debating the validity of someone's statement, which he claims is true. Immortality is such a cool subject to deal with. The revelation of him claiming he's Jesus about half way through I did not see coming (I thought an apostle at the most), and they tackle this idea brilliantly - by revealing that he only tried to bring Buddhism to another part of the world, never claimed to be the son of God and used Buddhist techniques to make it look like he was dead.
The ending I thought wasn't as strong as the rest of the film - I liked that he pretended to recant his story and claimed it was a joke, to put some of the more trouble people present at ease, and again that some still suspected it true (Todd's character and John's partner), but the son revelation and the death thing seemed a tad over the top.
Still a great film though, and among my fave SF films ever. Just bloody brilliant.
This review of The Man from Earth (2007) was written by Rohith N on 21 Jun 2011.
The Man from Earth has generally received very positive reviews.
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