God is on Denzel’s side again - ‘The Book of Eli’ Review

Posted on January 27, 2010 - 3:05am by michael

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” Stephen King, The Gunslinger

Not since Fallen in 1998 has a movie been made where God is so clearly on the side of Denzel Washington, and not since Kalifornia has such a violent road movie come along. Well, that may or may not be true. There has been an abundance of road films and post-apocalyptic films over the last decade or so, to the point where it has become quite a trick to make one of them stand out from the crowd. But directors Albert and Allen Hughes have done it with The Book of Eli, a film about a desolated future not all that far off, where the few remaining members of mankind are struggling to rebuild the world that they’ve lost. Or kill, rape, eat, or steal from each other. Whichever’s easier. In the middle of this gigantic chaos of emptiness is the movie’s thinly veiled Jesus figure Eli (Denzel Washington). You’ll know which one he is because he’ll be the guy with the name-tag that says “Hi! My name is Eli.” He’s given that name because ‘Eli’ can be found in the word ‘religion,’ which means they can highlight it in red in that poster with Gary Oldman where it says “Religion is Power.” "Eli" can also be found in the word "believe," as can "lie," but I digress. [caption id="attachment_69198" align="alignleft" width="392" caption="Gas. Food. Lodging. Turn around and drive 30 years in the opposite direction."][/caption] So anyway, Eli has been wandering west across the desolate landscape of America for, get this, 30 years, trying to find the rightful place for this book he’s carrying, which a voice in his head told him to take west. I know, 30 years, right? Seriously? I’m not sure if this is meant to poke holes in the infallibility of faith, because that’s what was guiding Eli, but if he had been walking for 30 years, I’m going to go ahead and assume that he got pretty thoroughly lost more than once. Or maybe the Hughes brothers just wanted to throw in a little homage to Andrew C.K. (check Youtube for “everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy”). Personally I just thought it was a bit too much exaggeration in C.K.'s attempt to get a good laugh, but evidently the Hughes brothers were impressed. So anyway, it’s strange that a description of the plot could sound so powerfully goofy, but the movie really is highly entertaining and brilliantly photographed. It also contains several outstanding performances, including from Gary Oldman as the thinly veiled Satan figure, who has dispatched all of his minions with the mission of recovering the Book. He’s also the passage across which the Hughes brothers deliver a scathing message to the religious masses.

“The book is a weapon aimed right at the hearts and minds of the weak and the desperate! It will give us control of them!”

Then again, Carnegie is the devil incarnate and can’t be expected to come forth with many glowing remarks about the Good Word, so I hope that most of our friends in the religious community managed to avoid any feelings of resentment. I love the way the film is photographed probably more than anything else, by the way. It is shot all in dull blues and grays and browns, giving the deserted American landscape a perfect feeling of desolation and destruction. Mankind was wiped out by what Eli calls “the flash” (an unfortunate solar event that killed nearly everyone on the planet, adding new meaning to the name of Mila Kunis’s character Solara, and also destroyed all but a single Bible), leaving the remnants of mankind living in a soulless wasteland ruled by warlords like Carnegie, who send out gangs of scary bikers to do their bidding in between rapes and assaults and murders and such. The only good place to be in a such a world is in the movie theater with us. Post-apocalyptic movies are generally rich with opportunities for catastrophic screw-ups, and the Hughes brothers manage to avoid mostly all of them. They can’t resist having a gigantic cliché for an antagonist, or populating his personal army with goofy tough guys taken right out of Mad Max, but you may very well be surprised to find some interesting and original additions to the genre, and these should be noted, despite other shortcomings like a bizarre ending that creates more questions than it answers. I really liked where they end up at the end of the movie, and what they discover there, but there are certain character developments that might have been just slightly overshooting in the symbolism department. Nevertheless, let’s all remember that it’s still January, and January is famously the off-season at the movies. Did You Hear About the Morgans? and Leap Year are two immediate train wrecks already well on their way to oblivion, but I’m happy to say that in just the first few weeks of this year we have gotten Daybreakers and The Book of Eli, both much better than we have come to expect from Januaries. If this keeps up, 2010 may very well shape up to be a great year at the movies! The Bean Meter