Great books of literature that focus on an immortal character/protagonist

>Great books of literature that focus on an immortal character/protagonist

Hello Veeky Forums

Have you guys ever watched that movie named “Man from Earth” that - with an extremely low budget and taking place basically in a single room – makes one feel the march of thousands and thousands of human generations? Here is a small synopsis (taken from Wikipedia):

>“The Man from Earth is a 2007 American drama science fiction film written by Jerome Bixby and directed by Richard Schenkman. It stars David Lee Smith as John Oldman, the protagonist. The screenplay was conceived by Jerome Bixby in the early 1960s and completed on his deathbed in April 1998.[2] The film gained recognition in part for being widely distributed through Internet peer-to-peer networks, which raised its profile. The film was later adapted by Schenkman into a stage play of the same name.”

>“The plot focuses on John Oldman, a departing university professor, who claims to be a Cro-Magnon (or Magdalenian caveman) who has secretly survived for more than 14,000 years. The entire film is set in and around Oldman's house during his farewell party and is composed almost entirely of dialogue. The plot advances through intellectual arguments between Oldman and his fellow faculty members.”

I was wondering: are there any books that have an immortal character/protagonist living thorough different ages? I want a book where one really feel that the protagonists have achieved great wisdom and deep perception of life, and not the terrible clichés of books like Twilight, or superhero stories (for example, the extremely old vampires in twilight that act like they were teenagers who were experiencing their first surge of hormones in puberty).

I want a character that has the wisdom of the angels in that movie, Wings of Desire, of which Roger Ebert says:

>The angels in “Wings of Desire” are not merely guardian angels, placed on Earth to look after human beings. They are witnesses, and they have been watching for a long time--since the beginning. Standing on a concrete river bank in Berlin, they recall that it took a long time before the primeval river found its bed. They remember the melting of the glaciers. They are a reflection of the solitude of God, who created everything and then had no one to witness what he had done; the role of the angels is to see.

rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-wings-of-desire-1988

The only book that comes to my mind right now is Orlando, by Virginia Woolf. I would love to know other examples.

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Corny-ass movie. It's compelling but really doesn't have anything to say. Never got it's cult status.

signature-reads.com/2018/01/books-on-immortality/

>I want a character that has the wisdom of the angels in that movie, Wings of Desire, of which Roger Ebert says:
>>The angels in “Wings of Desire” are not merely guardian angels, placed on Earth to look after human beings. They are witnesses, and they have been watching for a long time--since the beginning. Standing on a concrete river bank in Berlin, they recall that it took a long time before the primeval river found its bed. They remember the melting of the glaciers. They are a reflection of the solitude of God, who created everything and then had no one to witness what he had done; the role of the angels is to see.
>rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-wings-of-desire-1988

I miss him so much :(

You have shit taste. Go to watch some capeshit. I bet that's more of your liking.

It really isn't to my liking. And regardless, my taste is much better than yours.

It's a shit film. Felt like a Syfy channel original film with tonnes of clunky exposition, nothing at stake and soap opera performances.

I have watched so many great movies because of him. His writing is simple and direct yet evocative. He just put small flourishes here and there that sick I'm your mind but never seen out of place.
In every review you can feel this is someone who truly loves cinema. When he thinks a movie is bad, it doesn't feel like he is angry but just disappointed, hoping they will do better next time. And, as good critics always do, he knows who worked on a particular film and puts it into the context of their career.
I sometimes go back to his reviews because they feel like they further good movie, make me remember them more fondly.
His piece on Drive is such a comfy read
rogerebert.com/reviews/drive-2011

>It's compelling but really doesn't have anything to say.

Most works of art that have anything to say always speak about the same main themes: love, hate, loneliness, ambition, power, life, death, sickness, war, peace, happiness, sadness, empathy, tyranny, anxiety, etc - that is, the basic human emotions and the destinies of the lives of people that are not ourselves.
So if the themes are always the same, if nothing new is said, all that remains is how the artists tells his tale, how he presents his creatures, how he makes us witness the eternal dilemmas of the human race.
Works like War and Peace, Hamlet, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Citizen Kane, The Iliad, The Grand Hotel Budapest, The Godfather, The Oresteia, The Exorcist, Moby Dick, Jaws, Alien, Oedipus the King: they are all appealing to the same primal feelings that all humans experience. It’s the artistic merit of their dialogue, their characters, their imagery, their language (in short, their craft) that sets them apart from mediocre productions.
If you want something new, if you want something truly revolutionary, I suggest you start reading journals of physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics. When it comes to fiction, you are going to get the same materials over and over again, but told in different ways.
That said, Man from Earth is extremely original and compelling. It’s screenplay is capable of making one sense the vastness of the world and abyss of time inside a single room, in the course of a few hours, proving that what matters most in a movie is, above all other things, its screenplay (that is, you can create a masterpiece with a budget of scraps if you have a great text to work with).

All Men are Mortal by De Beauvoir

I think your opinion about themes and how films/stories speak and what they speak to is reductive. But your appreciation for the magnitude of The Man From Earth's tiny-scale scope hits on some good points. I also don't agree that whatever it is that this film is effective at is the one thing that film really should strive for. It is easily not a perfect film. I can say with certainty that it's effect is only regarding some kind of dazzlement towards how elaborate the conspiracy of the MC, not that it touches any truth or string of humanity. I think you are underselling the importance of those themes that you seem to think are not so important in the story that a film conveys.

And also, I should say that I'm not dissatisfied with art. I think there are many great permutations of old stories to come, and new themes as well. I just think this movie is kind of lame.

The Man From Earth borrows heavily from a short story called The Gnarly Man by L. Sprague de Camp. You might wanna give that a look.

The short story The Immortal by Jorge Luis Borges.

>that movie, Wings of Desire, of which Roger Ebert says:
>>The angels in “Wings of Desire” are not merely guardian angels, placed on Earth to look after human beings. They are witnesses, and they have been watching for a long time--since the beginning. Standing on a concrete river bank in Berlin, they recall that it took a long time before the primeval river found its bed. They remember the melting of the glaciers. They are a reflection of the solitude of God, who created everything and then had no one to witness what he had done; the role of the angels is to see.

this looks like a 10/10 movie

I feel that Man from Earth falls into the same category of taste as Refn's Drive and Copolla's Lost in Translation. These are movies which are disliked by both people who do not venture further than "capshit" fast food films and people who mostly watch arthouse cinema. I wouldn't call this limbo between high and low brow mid-brow, that belongs more to the likes of the Cohen Brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson, but a transitory, underdeveloped taste that appeals to psudes. Not to say that these are definitely bad films, just insubstantial.

Bump

What are your favourite films?

Worst movie I have every seen; the dialogue is just dragged out from bullshit point point to another. It attempts to make itself seem highbrow by glancing over a brief history of the world while throwing theories about God and belief systems. The second one is even worse, as said before in this tread it is a syfy teir circle jerk.

Take Shelter, Maps to the Stars, The Piano Teacher and Happiness—BITCH.

Man From Earth is a great movie until they start talking about Jesus. It was such an asspull and I could totally see it coming, but it still disappointed me. Up to that point it was clever and unique, but it pretty much turns into an amalgam of atheist cliches by the end. I still enjoy watching it I guess, but damn the sequel sucked.

And that ending: "I'm your dad, too, btw." It was so obviously going to happen.

Take shelter was pretty disappointing

Hmm, I can imagine some reasons you may think that. What disappointed you? To me, it's a very tender and empathetic film about the nightmares of schizophrenia. But the ending commits a bit of a crime against that reading. Another film, They Look Like People does something similar but with an ending that doesn't invalidate the empathy.

Thank you for that