The Book of Eli – Reviewed

WARNING:  PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD.  READ ONLY AFTER WATCHING THE FILM!!

So I saw The Book of Eli this weekend and I really enjoyed it.  Films with significant spiritual themes are pretty common these days but once in a while something comes along that’s really worth looking at and discussing.

First of all, the director(s):  The Hughes Brothers.  They have a short and fairly undistinguished filmography but their last film was one that I really liked.  It was called From Hell (2001), with Johnny Depp and Heather Graham. But don’t get too bent out a shape about a pastor liking a film called ‘From Hell.’  It was a period piece about the story of Jack the Ripper.

Book of Eli is set in post-apocalyptic America.  A land where everyone wears Oakley sunglasses and Meg Griffin hangs out with Gary Oldman and Denzel.

Ok, seriously, it was a Western.  Don’t let anyone tell you different.  Yes, you spent the entire film half expecting Mad Maxx to ride up on his motorcycle, but this film is a Western in every sense of the word.  We have a moral, iconic hero (Denzel) wandering from city to city adhering to a code of ethics sharply at odds with the lawlessness that owns the day. He dispatches bad guys, treats women with respect and is always polite when he’s disemboweling someone. We have a wealthy bad guy (Oldman) named ‘Carnegie’ (insert social commentary please) who has set himself up as the lord and master of a small town where the residents live or die at his pleasure.  There’s a saloon, women for sale and even an old fashioned high-noon shootout in the street.

Eli is, of course, not just wandering aimlessly and trying to survive.  He has a higher purpose.  He is carrying the last remaining copy of the Bible on earth.  The Bible seems to have been blamed for the war that brought the nuclear devastation and so all copies have been burned.  Carnegie wants the book for himself, to be used as a tool to manipulate the mindless lemmings that inhabit his world.  To him, it’s simply a means to an end.

The fact that there are preachers out there who do exactly that doesn’t (for me) diminish the offensive nature of the idea that all believers are following blindly.

Denzel has been called by God to deliver the book to a place where it can be kept safe and where it will be used to help people. This place is none other than Alcatraz prison. In this new world, Alcatraz has become the center of intellectual society.  The re-invention of the printing press and a growing library from the old world make this the perfect place to deliver this priceless treasure.

Don’t miss the analogy here folks.  The Bible is delivered to what used to be a prison.  An island that imprisoned people will now be the very place where they find their salvation.   If one were trying to illustrate that Jesus came to set the prisoner free, you could do a lot worse.

The theme of thirst permeates the film. Water is scarce and everyone craves it. And herein we find the Hughes brothers making more use of allegory. Everyone is scrounging and searching and killing each other over even small amounts of water.  But Denzel carries with him the wellspring of life. And he who drinks from this water will thirst no more.  And yes, I know that Jesus is the wellspring of life and not the Bible, but you get the idea.

As it turns out in the end, our hero arrives at his destination carrying a copy of the Bible with him even though the one he used throughout the film was taken.  In order to preserve the book, he has to dictate it to a scribe completely from memory.

Yes. I know that’s ridiculous but if you’ve suspended your disbelief this far into the film it actually doesn’t feel like that big a stretch.

Does the Bible get put on the shelf next to the other ‘holy’ books at the end? Yes.  But I love that throughout the film it is treated with respect and identified, even among non-believers, as something incredibly powerful if not God-breathed.

And as a side note, I can’t remember the last time an action movie (even a Western) inspired me to memorize more scripture.  This one did.

There’s another huge element to the film which I won’t reveal here out of respect for those who ignored the warning at the top and are reading this before seeing the film.  But let’s just say that I’m really looking forward to additional viewings and will definitely snag the Blu-Ray when it is released.

Ok peeps.  Sound off.

What did you think of the film?   Anything I missed?