The Man from Earth - Richard Schenkman

a volte esistono film sorprendenti, un unicum.
nessun effetto speciale, solo parole e non ti annoi un secondo, sceneggiatura e dialoghi di Jerome Bixby, e quando arriverai alla fine sarai d'accordo con me, avrai visto un film speciale - Ismaele

… Sarà un film duro da digerire per gli intossicati dell'azione perché quasi nulla accade, ma si crea nel dialogo e nel fluire dei ragionamenti mentre una delicata tensione tra i personaggi si spande e dilata le atmosfere, anche grazie all'eccellente sinergia tra gli attori. Dimostrando così che una buona fantascienza non dipende da effetti speciali e dalla quantità di azione quanto dalle domande sollevate "L'uomo che venne dalla terra" è una  delle più interessanti pellicole sci-fi del decennio duemila.

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…La SF vient donc dans Man from Earth nous titiller à un endroit assez profondément ancré en nous, quelque chose de l'ordre de la curiosité sans égale envers le monde et la vie que l'on entretient lorsque l'on est enfant. Le talent évident de conteur de Jerome Bixby nous ramène aux soirées passées, gamins, à contempler les étoiles, à disserter sans complexe sur le monde, l'univers, la vie.

da qui

…When the movie ended, I realized it is one of the smartest science fiction stories I have had the pleasure to see. There is no technology, no gadgets, no CGI special effects to distract us from the story (sadly, a method many mediocre sci-fi productions trick us into). Yet, the fact the movie looks for the answer what it means to be human is at its core a premise of a sci-fi genre. With the limited time we have in our lives, this movie is a time well spent.

da qui

Suggested to me by a friend a few months ago, The Man From Earth was an impressive thoughtful movie. There’s no big effects, even if the poster there might suggest something like that, and they never leave the location of John Oldman’s cabin. It’s simply a group of professors sitting around listening to John tell his story of how he’s actually a caveman and trying to decide if he’s being truthful or has lost his mind. Some of the acting is a little stiff and the low-budget is obvious in the actual look of the film with it being grainy but it’s the amazing story that pushes the film. It starts out simply enough with the friends getting together to say goodbye to John (David Lee Smith) but he eventually begins to tell them a story about how he’s been alive for over 14,000 years, essentially making him a caveman…

da qui

…The Man From Earth is a beautifully understated film, so much so that it seemed to sidestep cinematic release altogether and find its true audience on video/cable afterlife. A large part of this – and probably the reason it did not have a high profile – is because it eschews almost all the things that big successful contemporary science-fiction films involve – special effects, spectacle, lavish sets and makeup – and tells a conceptual story. The story is told entirely through dialogue and involves no more than a group of people sitting around a living room talking. In fact, the entire film could be staged as a one-act play without any changes to the script.

The script however is utterly fascinating. Jerome Bixby has certainly studied his prehistoric anthropology. Most unique is his perspective – how David Lee Smith, instead of being a fount of wisdom about prehistory, claims that he never understood most of what happened or about himself until present-day studies. Most film treatments of immortals have fallen into the categories of either showing them bored with living forever, seeking true love or else combat across the ages…

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