In the intriguing The Man From Earth, the late screenwriter Jerome Bixby wonders what it would be like to have lived 14,000 years and still be going strong. The audience will be able to find out at 8:15 p.m. tomorrow when The Man From Earth is screened at the Columbus Theater as part of the 11th Rhode Island International Film Festival.

The film opens as friends gather to send off a professor at a Southwestern college who suddenly and unexpectedly has decided to leave his job and move on. “Call it cabin fever,” John Oldman tells his mystified colleagues, who can’t imagine why a man who seemed to be on his way to bigger things would suddenly up and leave. “I just like to move on now and then … it’s a personal thing.”

But they persist in pressing him for an explanation and he reluctantly begins telling them of his 14,000-year journey across time, from Cro-Magnon days to the present.

His friends at first are incredulous. He tells them how he just never seems to age. “I never said I was immortal, just old,” he says with a nod to his name — Oldman.

“I had a chance to sail with Columbus, but I was not the adventurous type,” he tells them. He captures their imaginations with stories about hunting reindeer and mammoths and events from the Bronze Age. How he had to move on when people became suspicious and even fearful of a man who never seemed to age a day. How he learned about life from Buddha. How he knew Van Gogh, which may explain the painting he’s taking with him to his next home.

As he weaves his stories, some laugh at the notions he says are true. “This is out of any textbook,” says Art (William Katt).

But he’s so matter of fact in his telling that it’s difficult not to be caught up in his story and wonder what it would be like to have lived 14,000 years.

Others become upset when Oldman challenges their religious beliefs and offers first-hand insight into long-accepted stories from the New Testament.

Bixby, whose work includes episodes of The Twilight Zone, Fantastic Voyage and Star Trek, was known for writing “philosophical sci-fi,” pieces that looked for deeper meanings. With help from a strong cast, director Richard Schenkman holds the audience because of the power of Oldman’s bizarre story, even as his friends argue about whether he’s making it all up. Oldman (David Lee Smith) is mysterious and subtle and convincing, which makes his story and The Man From Earth work so well.

Nevertheless, the film could just as easily be presented as a stage play. There’s a single set and just a lot of back-and-forth talk.

Just when The Man From Earth and John Oldman’s tall tale seem about to run out of steam, there’s a devastatingly clever twist that arrives to save the day. It comes from almost nowhere and depends on unlikely coincidence. Yet it’s so perfect in the way it frames Oldman’s stories and poses new questions for him that The Man From Earth remains on solid ground, even in its fantasy.

mjanuson@projo.com