The Man from Earth

The house located in remote place...
The Man packing his stuff in mini truck....
Time is about late afternoon....
Few of his colleagues drop by his house....had wine...and its beginning of farewell talk...
Trying to find reasons behind sudden moving on from job of the character John Oldman....
And...here is the shocking confession....
The Man who lived thousands of years...a cave man...is no other but their fellow professor John....
After this you witness a most amazingly told story....do not allow you to move from your chair....and you start feeling the situation....

Except Shawshank Redemption, Phone-booth and Memento no other movie has made me feel to be in the plot situation...Screenplay by Jerome Bixby is so well written that takes you to the living room in which John is revealing threads of secret...opening new questions....and your mind behaves like you are the part of story...you are among the people who are sitting there and exploring John's mysterious past....

The entire film is set in living room...plot moves with conversation...no jokes..no sexual comments...no action...no fast pace story plots....no special effects...no action....its just TALK....
The film driven by thought provoking dialogs ..raised series of questions....explained in very scientific manner...anxious to disprove the statements...disturbed by instantly given explanation by John....doubts moves to frustration...who-what questions turned to why....making everyone in the film (including you nicely engaged audience ) to believe in what he says ....semi-belief...and now they want conformation....art of persuasion to complete new level... and this will go on till end...with nicely written climax.....you should watch it to feel it... Its just way cool...

Director has made good choice of location and other movie elements...costumes..music..set....elimination of all unwanted elements make easy to concentrate on movie's heart....its talk....remarkable expressions on faces....

Movies whole idea..selling point is "You can make people believe in anything" .....
no matter how absurd idea....
transform idea to persona to which audience can relate...can acquire trust...
be simple and weak element....just like audience...
don't prove yourself...let others prove you....
capture minds giving your ideas full emphasis...

Jerome Bixby's last work, a screenplay "The Man from Earth" , was conceived in the early 1960s and was completed on his death bed in April of 1998....keeps you amazed after you witness it....watch it...feel it...believe it...appreciate it....

I Wannt Selfish...

I don't want that = ? ~ ( I want that )

Few days back, I was talking with my friend about something - not sure what - but she mentioned that she really did not want to go. She said, I don't think that saying to you how much I don't want to go really conveys the sentiment. She said, I have the opposite of a desire, not the absence of a desire. She called it a dis-sire.

I thought about this for a while because the negation of something is not the same as its opposite. There is an "active" quality about wanting and there isn't the same "active" quality to "not wanting". The active nature of "not wanting" is communicated through tone and emphasis, not the words themselves. Lets say it "Wannt". e.g. From past three days I am eating rice, today I "Wannt" it.This concept of actively not wanting is more akin to repulsion or disgust than it is to the more benign "not wanting."

Sometimes, we are not sure of what we want, but we know what we "Wannt". So this is the thing that makes confusion many times. If you know exactly your wants then you can decide nicely. But if don't know your wants then you prefer to prune out "Wannt" part of it and leave with the subset remaining.

As we are talking about wanting something and Wannting few-things, lets take it to very personal level. Selfishness has become a dirty word AND an accepted defining characteristic of humankind. Why is that?

It seems to me that one of the greatest challenges in life is to figure out what I want. That is, to figure out what is to my benefit, what it is specifically, how to get it, etc. It seems hard to be purely selfishly motivated. The challenge of thinking of me, and only me, is making a decision on that criteria alone. Most decisions I make are based on a variety of factors, my interests of course included, and I suspect most people consider more than purely selfish variables.

PEOPLE are selfish, but I'm not. I think that's how most people understand the idea. I think that healthier way to think about it - and lose the pejorative connotation - is to understand that everyone has complex motives and interests, many of which include their own, perhaps exclusively. The statement: I have interests, desires and wants, and others do too; is probably more helpful than thinking that "People are selfish." It's also helpful to consider that people are struggling, constantly, to figure out and give shape to what they want, and think about how to get it. If we think of this as bad, we deny one of the core joys in life and the pleasures of ambition, competition and pride.



P.S. : This article has nothing to do with current placement scenario and people's decisions. Any resemblance is considered to be fictional.