J

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70 Points

Tuesday, January 19th, 2021 7:36 AM

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Why does my review conflict with the IMDB submission policies?

The following review I posted for the movie The Man from Earth (2007) has been declined with the following explanation:

"Reason: Does not meet contribution guidelines. Your contribution has been declined. Your submission conflicted with one or more of our policies as stated in our User Review Submission guide Please review these policies before submitting again. Thank you for understanding our position."

Could you please help me understand which policy or policies my submission conflicts with? Following is my review.

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TITLE: The movie's view of Judaism

I'd like to focus on one aspect of this movie's script, since I haven't seen it mentioned in other IMDB reviews (admittedly, I haven't read all of them): its view of Judaism.

According to the protagonist of the movie (who is literally Jesus), the spiritual message of the Jewish scripture is "fear and guilt". Another character describes the Ten commandments in a single word: "don't". In contrast, the New Testament is described as "a good code of ethics", "kindness, tolerance, brotherhood, love".

According to the movie, Jesus is likely of European ancestry: he describes his earliest memories of geographical surroundings as follows: "I suspect I saw the British Isles from what is now the French coast." His real name, John, is said not to be of Hebrew origins, it was erroneously "confused with the Hebrew 'Yochanan'".

The Old Testament is described as devoid of originality ("Moses was based on Misis, a Syrian myth", "The commandments are just modern updates of more ancient laws: Hammurabi's code"), and Jesus's teachings are presented as entirely divorced from it, rather they are said to have been imported lock stock and barrel from the Far East, literally from Buddha's own mouth.

Apart from the very last scene, when we learn that John/Jesus is the Psychiatrist's father, the only character about whose family we learn anything is the biologist. He describes himself as having been "raised on the Torah", but not as Jewish. He is married to a woman raised as a Muslim, and none of his children is Jewish: "My oldest son is an Atheist. My youngest is a Scientologist. My daughter is studying Hinduism."

23 Messages

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1.2K Points

4 years ago

My guess is that it's not a review of the movie; it's a little essay about one aspect of the movie. Try embedding it an actual review. You'd actually be better off saying that this view of Judaism bothered you, if you put that as part of an assessment of what was and wasn't good about the movie.

I have a most helpful review at Netflix of a popular film despite it being largely negative! But my first sentence says that all the positive stuff in other reviews is right. I then run down three flaws that might bother various viewers. You can try something similar.