MOVIE REVIEW

Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth
 by Stephen Simon

Friends who teach at the same college gather to say good-bye to one of their colleagues who, after ten years of teaching, inexplicably and without explanation, has resigned his position and plans to move away just before he attains tenure. Puzzled that he would choose to leave when he is so popular and when he just about to achieve tenure, they persist in questioning him as to why he has decided to depart. Enigmatic as always with even his friends, he deflects their questions until, in obvious personal turmoil, he decides to try to explain his motivation. As his story unfolds, his friends discover that he has never stayed anywhere for more than ten years. That they can accept. It’s only when they learn why he has never stayed longer than ten years in one place and how long his odyssey has actually been unfolding, that they are confronted with the most shocking interaction that any of them have ever experienced or even contemplated.

Such is the set-up of The Man From Earth and the synopsis above is just about all anyone can explain about the film without utterly ruining the surprises that unfold in that one evening in a remote cabin in the mountains. What can be said is that the teachers in that room are confronted by the explanations of some of the great mysteries of human existence itself.

The Man From Earth challenges the very nature of our human existence by putting some of our greatest beliefs to the ultimate test: the revelation of some plausible answers. We all know the old phrase that we should be careful what to wish for because we just may achieve it. When, in the film, we actually hear possible solutions to some of life’s most fascinating mysteries, it seems that each answer inevitably leads to yet another question that then leads to another question, ad infinitum. In other words, it presents us with the possibility that the question may be more sacred than the answer.

At The Spiritual Cinema Circle, we always say that the essence of spiritual cinema resides in the question, rather than the answer. We also believe that spiritual cinema films ask who we are and why we are here, and also illuminate how beautiful our humanity can be when we operate at our very best. Part of the great strength of The Man From Earth is that the film allows each of us to be in the room while some of the greatest questions of our existence are explored and many even “explained.”

But can they be?

Were those ultimate questions designed forever to be unanswerable by those of us in human form? A classic REO Speedwagon lyric says, “life is a journey, not a destination.” The filmmakers of Man From Earth seem to agree.

In the wonderful film Oh God, George Burns appears to John Denver, claiming to be God. Among the many challenges that Denver hurls at Burns is the fact that Burns looks just like any other human. Burns’ response is that he appears in human form to Denver because, if he actually appeared in his true form, Denver’s human mind could not comprehend that reality. It may be, then, that our brains are designed in such a way that the ineffable can never actually become grounded in the here and now. God/We may have very well engineered this human experience that we are having as spiritual beings in such a way that we are wired to ask the questions and leave the answers to what we may call… another time and another place. Or maybe to a moment where there is neither time nor place.

If we truly accepted that those solutions are beyond the reach of our human consciousness and that our lives are designed to focus on the search for those answers, knowing intuitively that we will never indeed uncover them, what would that mean to us? How would it affect our lives? And if someone came along who actually tried to answer those questions, how would we, how could we, respond? Welcome to an encounter with a Man From Earth.

Stephen Simon co-founded www.spiritualcinemacircle.com and produced such films as “Somewhere In Time” and “What Dreams May Come.” He also directed and produced both “Conversations With God” and “Indigo” and is the author of “The Force Is With You: Mystical Movies Messages That Inspire Our Lives.”