A Response to “The Book of Eli”, pt. 1
Posted on 05 July 2010
I watched “The Book of Eli” today, and even though it was farily watchable and the visuals were almost-spectacular, I found it narratively unsatisfying and thematically disturbing. Admittedly, because Independence Day fell on a Sunday, I was already on red-alert for nationalism parading in Christian garb, but “Eli” seemed to me just another example of the overly-Americanized Christianity 1 that threatens us on all sides.
To be sure, this film was not so much about Christianity as it was about religion more abstractly, about the meaning-giving power of belief and ritual. (It doesn’t so much matter what ones believes or to whom one prays, so long as one does believe and does pray.) Eli happens to be Christian (of a sort), but that is not as important as that he is a sincere believer, a reader (and in his better moments, an aspiring doer) of the Book, one who walks by ‘faith and not by sight’, as he himself explains.
In keeping with the Old-Western ideals that control the story’s moral framework, Eli’s faith is radically individualized. He walks the road entirely alone, sullen behind his dark goggles, iPod ear-buds crammed in his ears, and armed with an array of weapons, ancient and modern; he is also possessed of super-human combat and hunting skills — and of course the leather-bound KJV, embossed with a gilded cross.
Eli is a gunslinging monastic; part Jesse James, part St Francis: after slaying his victims, he prays; before killing them, he quotes Scripture. Think Jules Winnfield, but as a true believer. As one critic explains:
Eli practices a muscular sort of Christianity, not the wimpy old-fashioned turn-the-other-cheek variety. He’s not looking for a fight – indeed, he will watch from hiding, muttering to himself “Stay on the path it’s not your concern” as a man is robbed and killed and his wife is brutally raped by a gang of marauders. But he can be pushed just so far, and no further. “You lay that hand on me again and you will not get it back,” he warns a threatening tough. And he means it.
Don’t miss the fact that even though no weapon formed against Eli can prosper, he chooses not to interfere to save the man and his wife from Carnegie’s highwaymen. It is not because he fears for his life, but because his mission requires him to turn a blind eye to those injustices that fall alongside, rather than across, his divinely-ordered path. He can’t be expected to right every wrong.
But make no mistake: Eli’s violence is holy, a necessary evil — and so not really evil at all — required of him in his solitary, world-saving odyssey. He fights on the Lord’s side; he is the Spirit-gifted warrior, the embodiment of humanity’s ‘last, best hope’. Like America, Eli has to wield the weapons of his carnal warfare, for he does in fact wrestle against flesh-and-blood. If Julia Ward Howe discerned in Union cannon-fire and bayoneted rifles ‘a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel’ then she certainly would thrill at the arm- and head-severing swipes of Eli’s sword and the unerring accuracy of his death-dealing arrows. If she believed that Northern soldiers would receive God’s grace just to the extent that they avenged God against God’s Southern ‘contemners’, then she surely would crown Eli with Christ’s own glory. Eli is American military exceptionalism on steroids.
To be fair, the U.S. doesn’t corner the market on violence-as-salvation; the story is as old as empire. But it is nonetheless disturbing that many, many of our fellow Christians fail to see any difficulty with the idea. At some point, we have to come to terms with the fact that the way of Jesus is not heroic, and that the violence of the Cross is foolishness to the kingdoms of this world.
- Needless to say, I’m using the ‘overly-’ intentionally. ↩
3 responses to A Response to “The Book of Eli”, pt. 1
Dr. Green, thank you so much for writing this post. you took the words right out of my mouth, although I did my best not to express to those I am surrounded by, why I did not enjoy the film. Again, thank you, sheer genius!
Good thoughts. I found the movie to be anti-Catholic at heart. Indirectly (1) the completely individualistic nature of faith in the movie (2) the relationship between faith and reason troubled me. In my opinion it was directly anti-Catholic due to the main antagonist who desires the book as a grab for power. I say this because (1) this is how many protestants view the Catholic Church (2) the main antagonist wore several Catholic saint medallions.
Thoughts?
Not sure it was anti-Catholic so much as anti-ecclesial. There is nothing of church in Eli’s faith, to say the least (and, needless to say, nothing of Christ, either, therefore). Also, the tired use of faith as a peculiar kind of irrationality irritated me (e.g., ‘I walk by faith, not by sight’). I don’t think Carnegie’s character is of the ilk of the villains in, say, Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, who are explicitly anti-Catholic. Instead, I think Carnegie represents, is an instance of, the (straw-man) tyrant needed by democracies and Enlightenment ideologues as a foil.