I was unsure how to fell after seeing “The Book of Eli.”
Denzel Washington, playing a man carrying the last Bible on post-apocalyptic earth, talks about walking by faith and not by sight, but the movie left a sour taste because of the use of violence to get where he was going. He kills anyone who gets in his way, and I’m not entirely sure that this message, using the Christian bible as his resource, represents Christianity.
When one moves past this, however, one almost sees a story of redemption in the movie. In the beginning of the movie he quotes the narrative of the curse in Genesis and seems content to kill anyone who gets in the way of his voyage – dust returning to dust. I don’t want to give too much away, but Washington had become so paranoid that he let no one see the book and he only read it when he was alone. In a surprising reversal of the the scriptures – a shared commodity amongst a particular people – he had taken it all for himself in hopes that he would be able to find a place where it could be “protected.”
Scripture was never meant to be protect, it was meant to be shared in the danger that it might move us to be a peaceable people amongst a violent world.
The redemption comes in part when he meets a young girl played by Mila Kunis who asks him to share the book with him. At first reluctant, he finally agrees to share with her. Slowly one see the redemption of his character. They do a good job of not making it too hoaky, but I was disappointed with the ending shots of Mila Kunis looking as though she was going out to kill more people in the name of Christ.
Overall, the movie is not groundbreaking in terms of apocalyptic cinema, but I would say it is worth renting when it comes out on video and in terms of content it is just worth seeing. It’s one of those movies you probably have to watch twice to appreciate. You’ll understand after you see the movie.
Danny is a part time substitute teacher and a part time In-N-Out employee looking for some kind of teaching job in California. Hopefully someday the state of California will be back in action and ready to rock and roll and hire teachers back. He enjoys long walks on the beach and Star Wars.
I totally agree that there was lots of violence in the movie, but I didn’t take it as him killing off anyone that got in his way. Wasn’t the majority of it self-defense or defending innocent bystanders? And as far as protecting the book, yeah, he was a little over the top on that. I wondered the same thing- Isn’t the Bible meant to be shared? But he was living in a time where the earth was back to the beginning- no civilization, no technology, and he was afraid that it would be manipulated in order to gain power over fearful people with few resources.
All in all, I really enjoyed it.
Killing in self-defense is still killing. The problem with the movie was its inability to suspend disbelief. It had all the mixture of a western, but it mixed in religion with it. A little bit of religion would have been all right, but the movie made the book the central piece for which the fighting was taking place. The fact that Eli acted as a kind of prophet for the mouth of God made this even worse when he himself was doing the killing. Judgment is for God alone, and we do not see in most of the biblical text the prophet also being the warrior. These are two distinct roles, and it saddens me when they are mixed.