Spaceships, aliens, time travel, eye-popping gadgets, robots are some of the things that comes to our mind when the word science fiction is used. But, "The Man from Earth" consists none of the above and still achieves the mind-blowing awesomeness that only few science fiction movies manages to accomplish.
A professor resigns his job suddenly and is preparing to move out of town without attracting the attention of his colleagues. But they turn up to bid adieu with a small farewell party and some nagging questions in their mind. Why would a successful professor, who is the favorite for the next dean position wants to leave all of a sudden? What is he hiding from others? Why he looks younger than most of his counterparts of the same age and many more queries.
Upon further pushing and nudging, he slowly reveals that he is a prehistoric caveman who has lived more than 14,000 years. At first, the colleagues take this as a joke and being intellectuals themselves, they start playing along by asking logical questions. To their surprise, he provides quite convincing answers one after the other. Slowly the colleagues see that it is possible that he may be an actual caveman, but could not come to terms to believe his stories. The professor starts narrating how he took part in many historical events. At one point of time, he reveals a stunning and audacious fact about himself which makes the colleagues furious. Now the colleagues are not sure whether the professor is just toying with their minds or is he really sane?
A professor resigns his job suddenly and is preparing to move out of town without attracting the attention of his colleagues. But they turn up to bid adieu with a small farewell party and some nagging questions in their mind. Why would a successful professor, who is the favorite for the next dean position wants to leave all of a sudden? What is he hiding from others? Why he looks younger than most of his counterparts of the same age and many more queries.
Upon further pushing and nudging, he slowly reveals that he is a prehistoric caveman who has lived more than 14,000 years. At first, the colleagues take this as a joke and being intellectuals themselves, they start playing along by asking logical questions. To their surprise, he provides quite convincing answers one after the other. Slowly the colleagues see that it is possible that he may be an actual caveman, but could not come to terms to believe his stories. The professor starts narrating how he took part in many historical events. At one point of time, he reveals a stunning and audacious fact about himself which makes the colleagues furious. Now the colleagues are not sure whether the professor is just toying with their minds or is he really sane?
We too get played with our emotions and intelligence. We are in the same position of the colleagues. Though the facts looks convincing, we could never believe them. Having setup a great build-up, I would say that this movie never lets us down at the end by cheap twists or resolve the questions by a deus ex machina. And thats the most satisfying part of the movie when it respects our intelligence. The entire film is shot in a single room and few outside a house. Who said that making a science fiction movie requires breath-taking visuals and loads of money?
The off-screen story of this movie is also a little bit interesting. The story was written by an author in his death bed. The producer struggled to release this film. It was through the peer-to-peer sharing networks that his movie got much word-of-the-mouth recognition. The producer was so overwhelmed by the response that he publicly thanked these networks and was even willing to release his future film(s) straight through the file sharing networks. Wow.. that would be interesting!
The off-screen story of this movie is also a little bit interesting. The story was written by an author in his death bed. The producer struggled to release this film. It was through the peer-to-peer sharing networks that his movie got much word-of-the-mouth recognition. The producer was so overwhelmed by the response that he publicly thanked these networks and was even willing to release his future film(s) straight through the file sharing networks. Wow.. that would be interesting!
No comments:
Post a Comment