The Man from Earth

The first time I started watching this movie I had to turn it off because the acting was so bad. I tried a couple more times and made it further along, but kept falling asleep. I was watching it very late at night though, so don't take that as a criticism of the movie.

The Man from Earth is very sedate and low-key, and practically the entire movie takes place inside a college professor's cabin. He is moving on to a new life and set of adventures, and is joined by a handful of fellow professors and friends for a final, going-away party. The entire movie consists of the discussion that ensues between all the professors, experts in a wide variety of disciplines, after the main character poses an interesting question to them: What if a man from the stone age had been able to survive for 14,000 years and was living amongst them today?

Now as scintillating as this must sound, it is actually a pretty dynamic and engaging movie once you get past the first 20 minutes. The acting does get better, and as more and more secrets begin to be revealed (each scrutinized differently by the various experts), it really begins to roll. It could be likened to one of those late-night coffee and cigarette-fueled, spittle-laced, philosophical debates that you had in college at the local coffee house (before Starbucks killed them all). It's more then mere mental masturbation though, as the true reason for the discussion eventually starts to become clearer. It reminded me a lot of My Dinner with Andre, in which the entire movie is a single dinner conversation. Or even Talk Radio, which is just a single radio host talking the entire time. Both are excellent movies, btw.

Writer Jerome Bixby is well known in the science fiction community for having written several of the best Twilight Zone and Star Trek episodes. He also wrote Fantastic Voyage, in addition to a number of science fiction books. Holding true to form, he has a knack for being able to raise very thought-provoking ideas and questions, and then examine them carefully under a variety of microscopic lenses. When the main conversation really gets going, it is actually very engaging and suspenseful. His writing of the other dialog though--outside of the ivory tower of academic debate--stinks like an elephant carcass on the side of the road, left to rot by intellectual poachers.

Apparently the cast includes some very accomplished and veteran actors, but it certainly didn't appear that way to me. The entire movie was shot in one week, so I suppose that most of the time was devoted to memorizing the extremely large amount of dialog that the actors had to deliver. Director Richard Schenkman keeps the dialog lively and well-paced, but was not overly impressive with anything else (especially that terrible acting in the beginning). The appeal of the movie relies solely upon the strength of Bixby's script. Schenkman's other directorial projects include Playboy's International Playmates and Playmates in Paradise. I'm sure the acting is much better in those.

Despite the number of flaws, the story is very gripping, and like all good science fiction (or even regular fiction) stories, it leaves you pondering deep and interesting philosophical questions long after it is over. It is definitely a cerebral movie, yet it is not difficult to follow nor maintain focus throughout its duration because the questions *are* so very good. You can't help but be sucked into the debate, eagerly awaiting to find out what will happen next. (Well here's a hint: Someone talks. But it is *what* they are going to talk about next that you'll be eager to find out.)


The Man from Earth (2007)
Starring: David Lee Smith, Ellen Crawford, Richard Riehle
Directed by: Richard Schenkman

(5 out of 7 skinks)