Movie and Television Reviews

The Book of Eli starts with a vicarious thrill: I often glare at my cats and wish I held a deadly longbow. Eli lives out this fantasy for all of us.

From this auspicious beginning, we learn that Eli (Denzel Washington) is a drifter in a post-apocalyptic world. Well, not quite a drifter. He's a man making steady progress towards that holiest of American cities, San Francisco, to deliver the temporal salvation of mankind, a King James Bible, all copies of which have been destroyed since the war.

On the way, he encounters a town that resembles what I imagine any American city would if the Democrats were to win 30 strait elections cycles: Godless, barren, crime-ridden, with all commerce going through one man and his flunkies. The leader in this nameless town is Carnegie (Gary Oldman) who wants the Bible so that he may better control his residents. Well, Eli doesn't want to give it to him because 1. it's not his mission and 2. Carnegie obviously isn't properly disposed to dispense the Gospel.

Carnegie first tries to convince Eli to give up the Good Book by bribing him with food and water. When that fails, Carnegie deploys that near sure-fire corrupter of men: he sends Eli his step daughter, the post-apocalyptic babe Solara (Mila Kunis), along with a full complement of wiles. That stuff doesn't work on a holy man, of course (it would have worked on me), and sensing in him a nobility not present amongst the other men in her town, Solara decides to follow Eli.

Eli uses Solara's knowledge of local water sources and ditches her. Eli can't look the other way as highway bandits attempt to rape Solara, however, and once again employs Kitty-slayer (+1) to rescue her. Eli lets Solara tag along up until they encounter an elderly, disco-loving cannibal couple. Carnegie catches up to them and they fight. We get a legitimately clever ending.

What makes this movie unusual is that it places the stylistic action of a Tarantino movie in a non-nihilistic context. This no doubt will throw nihilists off, used as they are to senselessness. Conversely, it will refresh the cinematic palates of the God-oriented who rarely get to see cool God movies.

As a work of cinema, The Book of Eli is fine. There aren't any glaring errors (except that soap is not hard to make). It's funny without being silly. The fight sequences are original and well-done (and it's difficult to impress modern audiences with fights; creative fighting thrown at us every other movie- Bourne, Kill Bill, Matrix, etc).

The issue with the Book of Eli is that it feels flat. The acting's very good so that's not it. The plot is fine.

Why?

Possibilities:

1. TBofE implies what's wrong with a Bible-less world- purposeless-ness, rampant violence, rule by might. Usually, I prefer implied meaning over explicit explanations, but here it's not enough. The rapes, bad hygiene, and cat meat don't instill the creepy terror that the robot-controlled false reality of The Matrix or the almost-familiar societal dysfunction of the Surrogates, Blade Runner and Robocop does.

2. Explicitly Christian movies, books, and other media tend to unimpress because the obviousness of the solution saps the work of any drama. The best Christian movies are about real people and their struggles like Song of Bernadette and Ben Hur (I know, not real), have Christianity in the periphery like Blindside and Not Easily Broken, or operate in a misty religious haze like Knowing.

That this fix has been around for 2000 years and is controversial doesn't help.

(If non-Christians wish to crow that this is somehow a flaw in Christianity, consider that this rule would have applied if the book were the Communist Manifesto, Rights of Man, Declaration of Independence [Star Trek episode The Omega Glory], Shakespeare [The Postman], or the Audacity of Hope.)

Now, if the book were to have contained a discredation of the current on-screen oppressive regime, inspirational words (like Shakespeare's Henry V speech in The Postman) or some fictitious "All Spark," even if it that object referred to a real item or idea; that would be different: It seems to me that the more specific and realistic the solution to the problem, the less effective, from a cinematic perspective.

3. Its a McGuffin movie. McGuffin movies are those that center around one particular person or object. They don't have to be bad. Lord of the Rings is the McGuffin movie that rules them all and it's great. Perhaps because, again, the ring is an abstraction of evil, a weapon, and not a positive, culturally-baggaged solution.

4. TBofE just isn't big enough. All of the action takes place in a small town and a road. The climactic battle involves just a few people. My friend mentioned that no scene really distinguishes itself.

5. The fighting takes away from the movie. Cool fighting brings in the kiddies, but lowers the intelligence level of movies at least two notches. Had TBofE not had severed hands flying about, it may have reached a lower depth level.

Message/Politics:

Christianity as organizing force has precedent. At the end of the Western Roman empire, Christianity rallied the remaining remnants of the Roman empire and barbarians to create the most influential civilization in history. It served the same function for Russia, the Americas, and everywhere it's gained prominence. That it can do so after the collapse of itself, saving another religion filling the vacuum first, is an interesting proposition.

Religion gives men the strength to ignore the temptations of the flesh and focus on a higher purpose. Tiger Woods, Mark Sanford, Eliot Spitzer, et al should take notice: nothing brings a man more respect than doing so.

The Book of Eli is a very Protestant movie. Sola Scriptura is the underlying theology, as the world will seem to be reconstructed by amateur preachers slinging verses instead of direct successors of the Apostles dispensing sacraments. Catholics and Orthodox believe that Christianity would survive the burning of every Bible, but not the burning of every Bishop.

A note on the movie's violence. As anybody who's read the Bible, studied history, even the history of Christianity, or looks at the plight of many Christians in the world today knows, violence has, does, and will likely be part of the Christian experience until the Coming.

It's right for Christians to dislike violence and try to minimize it- it's what separated Christianity from the war-loving Romans and Norse. It's not OK to think that violence is always wrong. As long as one tries to avoid violence and not like it for its own sake, it's OK to participate in it. In fact, it's our duty to defend Christianity, even with violence.

If you look at the composition of the military, American soldiers tend to be more religious than the general population. One of the reasons is that religious people are more willing to see the need to defend things with one's life, if necessary.

Eli tries to avoid violence at several points in the movie. When confrontation becomes inevitable, however, Eli whoops booty. This is in keeping with Christian Just War theory. Eli is a complete Christian in this regard.

**Spoiler alert**

One may assume that Solara heads back to her home town at the end to preach Christianity, but the directors hedge their bets a bit. None of the Bible quotations Eli uses are from the New Testament. The printers at the end place the Bible in between the Tanakh and the Koran, making it seem one amongst equals and suggesting that Solara may preach a syncretic religion. I'd also like to mention that transcribing the Old Testament is a huge waste of time when one has a Tanakh on hand, as they're the same book.