MovieChat Forums > The Man from Earth (2007) Discussion > one issue that I have with this movie.. ...

one issue that I have with this movie.. spoilers**

posted 9 years ago by cal_culus3
9 replies | jump to latest

hey, so I was told to watch this movie by my cousin.

we are huge movie buffs and have an internal competition with each other as to who knows more abt stuff.

anyway, at first I didn't want to see this, 'cos I've never heard of it. Then I started watching it, it had a few familiar faces. and as it went, when he revealed that he sailed with Columbus, it got interesting.

I was ready for one of those last supper (1995), kinda movies.

I was ok with the movie till the end, I did feel they lingered on religion a tad longer. They coulda explored a lot of other things. But I guess they had to wind up the movie and this was the angle where ppl are getting upset and he would have to throw a feint and say he was playing with them and end it.

aaanyway, generally i love such movies, where there are a set of rules (cinematic, storywise), this happens in sci-fi, horror, fantasy etc.

here, the rules were, he was living for 14k years, we cannot disprove it, except for lab tests and neither can we prove it, cos anybody with enough book knowledge can claim this.

so heres the pull (sorry about the long tirade above), he says he was around for so long. he faked death, he has been jailed, he changed identities etc. so he knows better now.

so he would never, ever come close to anyone he has already had interaction with. That psych prof was his son. How can he come close to him?

its not like he forgot about him, he even says, he left enough for them etc. so why would anyone jeopardize himself by coming back into contact with someone so closely associated with him in the past.

this negates the rules. if he has so much learnings and most importantly moving every 10 years, which is the most integral part. he would never have done sucha thing.

there you go.

other than that, decent flick. doesnt deserve such a high rating. and if ppl are saying this is sci-fi, its misleading, its not. its just a drama/psychological genre.

[–] Tjanssen411 9 years ago

things you may have missed

1. Gruber was result of his time in Boston some 60? years ago... as you'll recall his Alias at the time was John T. Partee...

2. they are presently in California

3. Gruber took the name of his adoptive Father; so John Couldn't recognize him by either his alias, or the Mother's name

add all of this up and he's 3,000 miles away, meeting a Man who he last saw when he was less than 10 years old and does Not have a name he'd recognize. not to mention Gruber is Professor on a large campus...

[–] cal_culus3 9 years ago

no matter he still got caught.

thats the point, u never know wat circumstances might arrive. anything is possible, so y would he even risk it.

with his 14k yrs exp, he should know better

[–] MadSimian 9 years ago

Remember, it wasn't Oldman who invited Gruber to the get-together; iirc, it was Katt's character. He might very well have known his son was working there and made sure he'd never cross paths with him or maybe he didn't know and they just never happened to meet.

Either way, universities are big places, after all, and they were in different fields(psychology for Gruber and history/paleontology/archaeology for Oldman) which, if you knew anything about how universities are organized, you'd realize that they'd unlikely be teaching in the same building let alone the same part of the campus(thus decreasing the odds of his son seeing him even if Oldman DID know).

**edit**Actually, was running through my memory of the movie and I am pretty sure Oldman DID know because he seems familiar with what's happening in Gruber's current life(knowing his wife was sick with or died from cancer) and the fact that he could so easily remember all the details from his previous life as Gruber's father when Gruber has the heart attack.

What choice do I have? It is as if you have grabbed me by the base of my snarglies!

[–] klemen-kokot 9 years ago

@MadSimian He doesn't know about his wife's death at all. He only rushes out once the Biology professor tells him.

I thought it was pretty clear that he doesn't know Gruber. Gruber accidentally hears John outside and practically asks for proof if he is his father.

[–] MadSimian 9 years ago

Well, we weren't really shown enough in the movie to be sure whether or not he was aware of Gruber beforehand.

It is odd though...Oldman was portrayed as a pretty decent and empathetic guy. As such, I think it would have been completely in character for him to have made it a point to follow his childrens' lives after he was forced to leave to keep his immortality a secret. After all, as was shown in the movie, he was very lonely from having to "move on" every 10 years or so and never having any permanent love/people in his life. One way he could fight such loneliness would be for him to act as a kind of "guardian angel" for his children over the course of their entire life spans. For comparison, the Maharet character from "Queen of the Damned" does something similar to fight her loneliness of being an immortal vampire(one of the oldest, actually, according to canon) by keeping a record of her family tree(from the daughter she'd had before she'd been turned into a vampire).

If we take all of that as a given, you can always go one step further by saying that he might have specifically got the teaching job where he did so he COULD be close to/keep an eye on his son(Gruber).

In any case, I'm not saying that this is specifically what the director was going for in the movie itself. But, it is fun to use my imagination to fill in holes to make the characters more interesting and/or relatable(at least to me). ;D And, with that, I bid you good day sir(or madam).

KMFDM CAN'T SUCK HARD ENOUGH
HAVE A LITTLE MORE - YOU JUST LOVE THAT STUFF

[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] WhoToTrust 9 years ago

by cal_culus3 » no matter he still got caught.

thats the point, u never know wat circumstances might arrive. anything is possible, so y would he even risk it.

with his 14k yrs exp, he should know better

How could he "know better" when you just said yourself that you never know what circumstances might arrive?

[–] Movius-Dudem-66 9 years ago

Tjannsen's answer provides good enough internal logic, so this part of the story should no longer bother you at all.

Plot wise, this is the story teller's way of cleverly informing us that John Oldman was most likely telling everybody the truth the whole time. It's evidence. It's the proof nobody thought he could produce.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths

[–] chuck-526 9 years ago

so he would never, ever come close to anyone he has already had interaction with

Really? Never?

The "general public" yes. People he doesn't know all that well yes. But his son?

We've already seen John express an inordinate fondness for Will: at least I wouldn't go outside by myself and express sympathy to someone who had just pulled a gun on me:-)

John very seldom tells anyone the real story either. But as this indicates he does make exceptions.

It's the "default" or "rule of thumb" with which he approaches most situations. But how did 99% get to be 100%?