A Response to “The Book of Eli”, pt 3
Posted on 08 July 2010
Not everyone agrees with my reading of the film, to say the least. For instance, consider Robert Cheeks’ review. He found the film deeply moving, even revelatory, and proclaims it the ‘finest film ever made’.
If I were to reduce the film to a simple sentence I would quote St. Francis when he said, “Preach the Gospel at all times, if necessary use words.” This film is a brilliantly executed symbol that expresses the tension of the experience of Infinite Being in metalepsis with being at the eschaton. Brilliantly written and beautifully executed the film reflects the effects of Original Sin on the nature of man, where man is moving to that point where he no longer remembers the Logos or seeks the redemption and salvation of Jesus Christ.
A blogger at The Whirlpool’s Rim offers what strikes me as a saner reading of the film, concluding that the ‘real interest of the movie’ is ‘memory as participation in the Logos’. But in the final analysis, I’m not buying that reading, either, even if it does get at an aspect of the film.
Ben Witherington, whose reading of “The Road” I found to be wrong-headed, gives an exasperating readingof this film. He classifies it (rightly) as a ‘post-apocalypse western’ and acknowledges how violent the film is, but quickly remarks that the same held true on the ‘old frontier– it was in part how the West was won’. To his credit, Witherington recognizes the ’good deal of irony in the “let’s fight over the Bible” thrust of this film, when the Bible includes the message to put down your weapons and beat them into plowshares’. But he doesn’t find this too troubling, because ‘this movie is more like the book of Joshua or Judges or Exodus than like the Gospels’. To say the least.
Witherington heartily recommends ‘this parabolic movie’, and effuses praise for Denzel Washington’s and Gary Oldman’s performances. He finds the film ‘entirely an appropriate one for a country at war, as ours is, or a country trying to help a nation like Haiti recover from what must have seemed like a nuclear disaster’, and concludes:
For those hoping to escape the final tribulation on earth, this movie has a simple message— buckle your seat belts, because no one, including Christians, are leaving this world without dying. No one. Eli’s coming, coming first, but Jesus will be a while later.
Why is this film ‘entirely appropriate’ for a country at war? In what ways is it helpful for a country at any time? Witherington doesn’t explain. I can’t for the life of me understand what he means by that last line, but it leaves me cold and stomach-sick. I don’t know what in the world any of his comments have to do with the Kingdom of God. But, to be fair, this film had nothing to do with the Kingdom either; only with lesser kingdoms, and the use they seek to make of Word.
1 Response to A Response to “The Book of Eli”, pt 3
great Responses to the Book of Eli. I always appreciate your commentary. I saw it once and was appropriately disturbed but lacked for words i could put to paper about some of the subtler things you teased out. Thanks.