By Jonathan Fisher, April 17th, 2010
The Book of Eli is going to ruffle a lot of feathers. The radical Christian right in the United States are claiming it as their own, a film about the veracity and importance of Christianity as the one, true religion. Some Atheists (though admittedly not many) are claiming just the opposite, that this is a movie dictating a belief against God's existence. Still others think that the religious subtext is irrelevant, and that what The Book of Eli is really about is the preservation of literacy and culture. If you visit Metacritic, you'll see that most reviewers use the word "religion" or "God" in the excerpt provided of their review. It's currently sitting at a very low 53%, which could also be read, I think, as "53% in favour of God!"
Denzel Washington plays a man wandering around the wasteland of a post-apocalyptic United States. Like the world depicted in The Road, this world is harsh and unforgiving. Life for 99% of creatures on the planet is a tough slog. Most life has to put up with famine, disease, predators, and ultimately a short life expectancy. The Book of Eli, like its cousin The Road, envisions a scenario in which humans lose their ranking as the one, priveliged species on the planet that doesn't need to worry about these things.
In Denzel's backpack, we see a K-Mart badge proclaiming "Hi! My name is Eli". It's not explained if that's actually his badge, but the movie's called The Book of Eli, so forgive me if I make an inference. Eli wanders this desolate landscape, killing cats and rats to survive. For the first third of the film, it seems unclear what he is after or where he is going. He constantly reads and reverently kisses a leather-bound copy of the Holy Bible, so we must assume he is a religious man or a believer of some sort. This assumption is solidified when he witnesses a helpless couple being raped and murdered by a pack of degenerate survivors. Rather than jumping to their rescue (we know that he's an excellent marksman and a handy knife-wielder courtesy of an earlier fight scene that unmistakably references Chan Wook-Park's Oldboy), Eli hides behind a rock and whispers, "Stick to the path, it's none of your concern."
Eli reaches an ugly-looking town, governed by an articulate but malevolent leader named Carnegie (Gary Oldman). Eli grabs the attention of Carnegie after another bloodbath in the town bar. After offering Eli a spot in his power structure -- which is refused -- Carnegie discovers that Eli is in possession of a copy of the Bible, something he has been searching for for many years. Carnegie's reasons are not spiritual, though -- he wants to Bible to brainwash his people into believing in God, to harness their desperation and desire for purpose to suit his own ends.
This set-up allows The Book of Eli to function in two fundamental ways. The first is as a piece of heart-pounding escapist fantasy. It succeeds spectacularly, thanks to the visual design -- courtesy of the Hughes Brothers, Albert and Allen, who previously directed the interestingly flawed From Hell -- as well as two sturdy performances from Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman. Oldman, particularly, sinks his teeth into the character of Carnegie. Oldman is one of our most valuable, under-appreciated character actors. As Carnegie, every facial tic, every movement of his body expresses pure malevolence, made even more unsettling since the character appears to have a great intellect.
But The Book of Eli is more than a brainless futuristic action movie. This movie has ideas. It doesn't create an organic, vivid futuristic wasteland simply to people it with human cannon fodder. This movie is about religion, but doesn't necessarily swing either way when it comes to the question of God's existence. The Book of Eli is more concerned about the nature and function of religion itself, how it flourishes in times of great human suffering, how it is exploited by power-hungry men who understand its power over the desperate.
Some have argued that The Book of Eli is explicitly a pro-Christian text, but I think it's far more ambiguous than that. It is honest about what faith is -- Eli says, when explaining to Carnegie's young, good-hearted step-daughter (Mila Kunis) who had no concept of religion before meeting Eli, that faith is "knowing that something is true, even when you don't know it." Later Kunis' character asks Eli curiously why he does what he does simply because "a voice in your head told you to".
These scenes are hardly propagandistic for religious belief, and Dawkins-loving Atheists could point to these as evidence of The Book of Eli's stance against the existence of God, or at the very least its stance for agnosticism. This movie point out the basic logic flaws in a belief in God(s). Whether you can make the leap of faith that religious belief requires, or if you look down on those that see unquestioning faith as a virtue will probably colour the way you respond to this movie.
Then there's the issue of the moral code that Eli lives by. Carnegie's step-daughter has no religious belief, nor does she base her moral code on any higher authority, yet she displays kindness and compassion. Eli betrays her at one point. What a fascinating paradox -- the man whose moral code is based on a religious text is accused of immorally lying by a person whose moral code is based on... well, something else. This question of whether religion gained its morals from humans, or vice versa, has been explored for hundreds of years. The Book of Eli doesn't short-change it. This layer of morality and the Bible again makes The Book of Eli far more complex than its dismissers give it credit for.
I've carefully tried to avoid giving away if I'm a religious man, an agnostic, or an Atheist. I think it's irrelevant, and if you approach The Book of Eli with a mind willing to think about theism, its function and its purpose in human evolution, this film has a lot to offer. I think the basic thesis of The Book of Eli is that religion will be around as long as there are humans to perpetuate it, and the mystery and complexity of its existence (by that I mean the existence of religion, not the existence of God) will reverberate until either evidence for God's existence is found, or humans evolve out of the need for theistic belief. Even after a nuclear bomb decimates our species, we'll be right back where we started from.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment