Why I Liked "The Book of Eli"

When I started this blog a month ago, it was with the understanding that I had a huge backlog of material in my journal over the last two decades, and my idea was to share both some of my old and new writings.  In my intro, I explained how I had reviewed the movie The Book of Eli in my journal and shared what I wrote on Facebook, the very same essay I include below, and my older brother commented how impressed he was by my writing.  That, coupled with another person finding out that I love to write but don't keep a blog is what prompted me to finally start blogging in the first place.

However, I couldn't get my twin brother to understand what it is I liked about this movie when I picked this one Friday night in April, 2011, and he and his wife absolutely hated it.  "So violent for a 'Christian' film" they said when they politely tried to grill me about it over lunch the following Sunday.  I couldn't make them understand, and after upsetting him by posting to Facebook and making generalization about the kinds of entertainments he prefers, we've agreed to simply disagree; yet there is still the rest of my family, who agrees with my review below, and Scott, who paid me the ultimate compliment when he said after reading this review that I am real writer, whether or not it's my vocation.  "Bravo, dear brother" he posted back to me on Facebook, but I would turn that accolade around and thank him as well for his rave review of my writing abilities!

Image from http://www.shockya.com/news/2009/12/13/the-book-of-eli-poster-deliver-us/

The Book of Eli is a post-apocalyptic film that showed up on my radar out of nowhere.  I hadn’t heard much about it when my sister invited me and Mom to the movies with them, and despite its stark similarities to many such films that had come before – the Mad Max trilogy, old westerns like Hang ‘Em High, or many a latter day zombie movie – there was one thing this movie had that these others didn’t, and that was, believe it or not, Christ.  None of these other films could be considered Christian in nature, and none of them catered to a Christian audience.  It’s the sort of thing that makes all those supposedly radical, non-elitist reviewers over at Rotten Tomatoes turn up their liberal noses.  The book of Eli, you see, is a Bible, the very same one all the liberal college professors keep trying to convince everyone is nothing but pure fiction.  Denzel Washington’s character Eli is one of the oldest living people, having survived the apocalypse, and now, several decades later, all the young people who remain can’t read.  Gary Oldman plays an evil, manipulative character who wants to obtain Eli’s Bible at all costs, not because he has personal reverence for the book, but simply because he knows its power, and wants to use it to control the masses and rule the world.  Sure, he believes in God and in the Bible, but he is also unjust, and merely wants to use it for his own deplorable purposes that don’t mesh with what is written in the pages of the book.  His is a vile, wicked character, who thinks nothing of beating his blind girlfriend (Jessica Beals of Flashdance fame) or trying to force her daughter upon Eli sexually, all so he can determine if Eli really has a Bible or not.  Eli, on the other hand, is noble, and over the last 30 years since World War III destroyed everything, he has read it and cherished it, and committed it to memory.  He loved the Lord with all his heart, while Oldman only loved the power the Bible might give him if he could possess it, telling a cohort how he could get people to do or believe anything he wanted them to believe by using the words of the book.  Nothing against them really, because they couldn’t possibly understand what it’s really all about, but the liberals, like those over at Rotten Tomatoes for instance, can only see it as a gritty, futuristic, western-like thriller centering around two men fighting over the last remaining Bible on earth – just a book to them - no big deal!  But for Christians, we know, and we can identify with the Denzel Washington character, the noble one full of the love of God.

            I personally think there is a small but triumphant change taking place in Hollywood.  Oh, don’t get me wrong; the small Christian studios are still making dramas that appeal to the Christian crowd, like To Save a Life, that the critical elite will pass over and refer to as the equivalent of an After School Special (and truthfully, they’re right: By Hollywood standards, these films are small potatoes, not as expensive or as polished as the usual product from Tinseltown, both in the technical realm, and in the acting and heavy-handed scripts).  Yet they have also taken notice of the success of films like Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, and the Tyler Perry movies, and some of these “After School Special” variety, like the Kendrick Brothers’ Facing the Giants and Fireproof, or even such films as The Exorcism of Emily Rose or a Christian based fantasy like The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.  They’ve discovered an audience there, a Christian audience who is tired of all the filth, and are looking for something more positive and redeeming and inspirational.  It’s why Sandra Bullock’s career has suddenly been revived after years and years of one average film after another.  It wasn’t until she played the tough, inspirational, fully-realized Christian character of Leigh Anne Tuohy in The Blind Side that she became hot again, and was the frontrunner for a Best Actress Oscar!  There’s life in them there Christians yet!

Image from http://www.dramastyle.com/movie/The-Book-of-Eli/

It’s a cold, cold world out there.  In the fictional landscape of this movie, it’s been 30 years since the nuclear apocalypse.  Eli, played by Denzel Washington, is a drifter, wandering from place to place.  He’s a killer only because he has to be.  In this post-apocalyptic, dry and dusty landscape devoid of life, it is also mostly devoid of decency in the few human beings that are left, and as with the future world of the Mad Max trilogy, roving gangs will kill you for anything you possess that they may want, especially water, or they may decide to kill you for no reason at all.  And in this violent, desolate wasteland, Eli has learned how to survive, and protect himself, and the sacred book he carries and cherishes and loves.  It means everything to Eli.

            Now the critics for this movie, as one would expect, will not “get” the religious connotations.  Oh, they’ll understand it from a story angle.  They’ll see that Eli is a devoutly religious man, and understand full well the importance to the narrative of the last remaining bible that everyone seems intent on possessing, particularly Eli and Gary Oldman’s Carnegie, two people that were around before the world went to hell, and who know the importance of this book.  The critics will understand the plot, and roll their eyes at the same time, and yet they don’t have the faintest clue as to how meaningful that book really is, because they don’t believe.

            So Eli must kill.  He must kill – or be killed.  And he’s quite skilled in the use of various pieces of cutlery, from knives and daggers to swords and machetes.  He tells one ruthless vagabond bully who tries to accost him that if he puts his hand on him again, he won’t get it back.  The guy, of course, laughs, but in the end, when Eli has made mincemeat of his entire roving gang and the leader is sitting on the ground without his hand, Eli reminds him, “I told you you weren’t gonna get that back.”  He’s not perfect.  In a Godless world full of violence, this man who loves the Lord and only wants peace must employ violence to achieve it.  It’s sad, but true.  He must also keep his wits about him, and always be cunning.  Later in the movie, when he and a female friend come across a seemingly kind, old couple, they realize the crazy old loons have actually been only playing the part of a “charming old couple” to unnerve and disarm their guests before killing them and eating them!  Eli is too smart for them as well.   He has to be.

            And the reason he has to be isn’t for himself or his own safety.  It is for the book he carries, the last remaining Bible in existence.  His whole being, his reason for carrying on and existing, is to see to the preservation of the Word of God, so it will not be lost.  It is too important to him to let die, or be destroyed, or to find its way into the wrong hands.  This is something detractors of the movie would never understand, unless they became believers.

            I truly don’t believe this movie will convert anybody that isn’t already a Christian.  They can just enjoy it as a post-apocalyptic action thriller with unfortunate and ridiculous religious overtones.  (You know that’s what they say.)  Believers, on the other hand, can actually identify with it, and with its main character.  Our land may not literally be the cruel wasteland that Eli must physically endure, but figuratively, we, like Eli, walk through a wicked wasteland with evil all around us.  While Eli’s world is one of life-or-death brutality, ours is not, unless you look at the story from a spiritual level.  From the Christian perspective, from the words of the book, of our purpose here and what waits for us after we die, ours is the same life-and-death struggle.  We can learn a lot from this character about commitment and loving the Lord our God with all our heart, all our mind, all our soul, and all our strength, especially when comparing Eli to the evil Carnegie, who only wants to use the prevailing words of the book out of selfishness and a quest for power.  In the end, Eli lives for God, and dies for God.  Would that we, in our faith, could be the same!