Saw a good movie yesterday, three days after its world premiere: The Man from Earth (imdb entry here). Imagine if you will… the movie’s premise: “What if a man from the Upper Paleolithic had survived until the present day?” Take six professors plus one lecher’d coed following that to the bottom of the rabbit hole, you’ve got the whole movie. It’s a simple, elegant concept, and the execution was good. Acting was excellent. Music coulda been better. The popcorn was awful, but I won’t blame the director for that.
Like any good movie… like any good intellectual movie, it makes you consider ideas presented long after the presentation’s over. Like what you’d do with 14,000 years of life. Education. Religion. Travel. Love. It’s the same forever-change-yer-life choices we all meet, but on a scale that opens them up for just about anything. Who would you meet? How would you affect history? It’s refreshing to reconsider all of them, and see the story play around unexpectedly with each. Not to mention the big, obvious, elephant-in-room question: would you want to live that long, given the choice? Never dying, unless by intentional means? I’m not gonna answer that. Certainly not here.
See the movie and have a good conversation afterwards. If you have to see if in an art theater, bring your own popcorn. The things you eat now will stay with you for the rest of your life.