The Immortal (14:01)
Carl Firth; IMDb; YouTube

Caution: spoilers.

This is supposed to be a science fiction short film, but I just can't see it as such. It's a bit closer to fantasy, though I don't think that's right, either. It could be paranormal, or surreal... but I mostly just see it as a drama, albeit with a fantastic premise.

It's narrated by an unnamed man, who talks about his childhood, and how he learned about death when his grandfather (James Cromwell, in a surprisingly small role) died. And sometime after that, his father died, unexpectedly. So the narrator became obsessed with finding the secret to immortality... and found it. He became not only immortal, but indestructible. He doesn't even need to breathe, or anything. We see some of the major changes that come to the world around him, over a countless amount of time. We also see the common enough trope of the immortal outliving his wife. But immortality is so much vaster than that. He outlives the Earth itself, and even the Sun. And he will never cease to exist, floating all alone in space, with obviously nothing to do. Forever. Which actually makes the short something of a horror film, as well as the other genres I mentioned.

I must say, I found it surprising that there were no other immortals, given that whatever made him immortal (he tried various things) must have been available at some point in history to other people, however well hidden those things were. Someone else must have found it, but apparently not. Anyway, the story also reminds me of a story I wrote myself, years ago, called The Template, which was about a man who survived the death of his universe and birth of the next universe. So it kind of took the concept even further than this short film did, and it wasn't quite as horrific, in the long run. But anyway, I do think this short film was very well made, and really makes you think about the concept of immortality to a further degree than most stories about immortals do. So I'm glad to have seen it, but I'm not sure my overall enjoyment of the film is equal to my estimation of its quality, which is why I don't know how to rate it. Perhaps that's because we don't really get to know the man that well as an individual. He's kind of an everyman, I guess, which makes it both easier and harder to relate to him. But at least his plight makes the story interesting.