The Book of Eli

It’s been raining post apocalyptic thrillers the last four months or so. 9, The Road, and now The Book of Eli. Although not as dark as The Road nor as hopeful/magical as 9, this movie falls somewhere in between. The one thing they all share though? Mediocrity. Surprisingly though, Eli is probably my favorite of the three.

Directed by The Hughes Brothers (From Hell, Menace II Society) the movie tells the story of Eli (Denzel Washingon), a man traversing westward. He has a book, a very special book. I guess it could be considered a spoiler so I won’t divulge what the book is exactly, but I’m sure you can guess from the marketing material. Needless to say, the book is very important to Eli. Then when Eli bumps into Carnegie (Gary Oldman), things go awry. Carnegie is basically the leader of a small, dusted town. He has biker gangs scouring the nuclear deserts looking for one book. It just so happens to be the book Eli carries. Carnegie realizes the power such a book possesses and wants to use it to strike fear into his citizens. For lack of a less spoilery term, he needs to be their savior.

So the movie involves religion and I know that’s a touchy subject so I’m not going to delve into my beliefs on the matter. Rather, it’s interesting that the main concern for the Carnegie character is to gain the bible to spread The Word and take advantage of his town folk with “the fear of God.” This notion, at least to me, personifies the argument that most atheists have against religion- it’s exploitative. He wants to use religion as a weapon. Yet, at the same time, Eli is rather benevolent in his journey to get the book into the hands of people that can protect it. So you get a good mix of both beliefs into the movie and I’m sure someone with far better knowledge of these things could do it justice but I’m not even going to try. The point is, no matter where you stand on religion, I think there’s something here for you. For the record, The Hughes Brothers were in attendance for our screening and one of them mentioned that he struggled trying to determine this direction for the film because of his “atheist beliefs.” I think all in all, they strike a good balance.

Moving along, the set pieces are rather nice. The opening sequence is in a forest with ash falling all around. Dust seems to cover everything and the whole movie just feels tangible. It reminds me of how poorly this was done in Terminator: Salvation (I promise I’ll stop griping about this movie eventually). I remember one scene in that movie where John Connor starts playing with a Sony portable of some sort and the fucking thing looks brand new. Eli carries around an iPod in this movie and it looks fucked up. You can tell that when the nuclear war occurred, everything was tarnished to some extent. This along with the damn near “wild, wild west” set piece for the town just made shit cool.

I’ll go on with more dissection but I really must warn you, I’m going to talk about a few things here that are definitely spoilers. If you want my true recommendation for the movie, I’d say it’s middling. Not great, not a train wreck; just fair. If you go into the movie seeking just one thing- Denzel, religion, action, etc- I think you’ll be disappointed. Although that stuff is there, none of it is there so much that it leaves an impression. This is a fucking January release after all isn’t it? So I’d say that if you’re sold on the ads, you’ll be pretty much sold on the movie. But otherwise, go check out Leap Year and tell me how it is.

With that out of the way and if you don’t mind some spoilers, let’s look closer.

I’ll start with what I really liked. I enjoyed the set up of the movie but somewhere in the middle it lost me. Then towards the end of the second act there’s an outstanding sequence involving our hero being held up in a house with some other survivors while Carnegie and his gang blast the shack to pieces. There’s a fluidity to the action sequence that just separates itself from other action films. I’ll try to describe it even though I know I’m terrible at this sort of thing: the camera starts outside with the bad guys. As they begin shooting, the camera turns and pushes in through a bullet hole to see Denzel and company huddling for cover. We then float through the house and back outside. This technique continues for a while and really engages you in the scene. Although not as effective nor well done, it’s similar to the lengthy choreographed shots from Children of Men. It really works and is easily the steal of the show.

I’ll tread through this paragraph lightly because I know you didn’t listen to my spoiler warning. The film falls into the same fault that Sherlock Holmes did for me. Simply put, a character, Eli in this example, is making a decision in order to have the film progress in an unnecessary fashion. There are a couple of twists in the end and while one is nicely ironic, the other forced me to think, “then why the fuck did he go to all that trouble?” I won’t go into detail, but suffice to say, the only reason Eli pisses off the bad guys is so they chase him and make some kick ass action sequences. Again, much appreciated action sequences but if you boil it down, they’re unwarranted. At least in this movie, as opposed to Holmes, the reason for this erroneous move is summed up when Eli declares he had to learn to not be selfish. That may work for some audiences and that’s fine. It just doesn’t work for me.

I know, I’m a nit picky fucktard. But them’s my arguments for the movie. Since there was a Q/A with the directors after the movie, I wanted to share a bit of what was asked and answered.

The first question that went up was in regard to the comparisons this movie has gotten to Fallout 3. The directors are children of the 70s and quite bluntly stated they had never played the game. The gentleman who wrote the movie, Gary Whitta, was apparently very sore at this comparison. For the record, he used to write for PC Magazine but any resemblance between Fallout 3 and The Book of Eli is pure coincidence.

Another question came from an audience member who wanted to know how Gary Oldman got involved. Apparently Denzel did a number of workshops with The Hughes Brothers prior to filming where he would act out the script for them repeatedly. He kept saying that Carnegie should say a line like Gary Oldman. So eventually they said, fuck it, let’s get Oldman

Michael Gambon plays a small role in the film and someone asked how it felt to direct Dumbledore (from the Harry Potter movies) in such an adult fashion. I can’t remember the answer, but someone then mentioned that Oldman plays Sirius Black, to which one of the Hughes Brothers replied, “that name sounds like a Blacksploitation movie.”

There was also a question regarding the silhouetted fight sequence I’m sure you saw in the trailer. They apparently did three takes of the shot and it was done in front of a green screen so they could control the lighting. They made mention that Denzel didn’t want it to be in the shadows because then he wouldn’t be seen. They also mentioned how he got a $20 million paycheck for the movie.

The final question, at least for me because I’m oblivious to these things, might come off as a spoiler. Apparently Eli might be blind (?) but no one, not even the filmmakers or Denzel really know. They all have their own arguments but the directors didn’t divulge during the Q/A. I’ll say he wasn’t because he was the only one that could hit a fucker with a gun in this movie.

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