Christian Ethics and the Movies
“It is better to watch a good movie again than a bad movie once!”
Misuse of the Bible
The Book of Eli (2010)
Reviewed by Monty M. Self, Little Rock, AR
Response by David A. Thomas
Good movies should take us out of this world and transform us into another reality, while at the same time either helping us recover part of our humanity that has been lost or forcing us to reconcile what is wrong with our world. The Book of Eli does both. This post-apocalyptic action-drama forces viewers to ask about the nature of religion and more specifically how society views the Bible.
The movie begins by introducing its viewers to Eli (Denzel Washington), a silent solitary pacifistic warrior who is on a divine mission to deliver a book to an undisclosed location out West. In addition to his devotion to the book, Eli is a spiritual man who regularly prays, attempts to avoid conflict, and is not tempted by sins of the flesh. Eli posses a singular purpose—to protect the book.
With a need for water and a desire to recharge the external battery of his Ipod, Eli arrives at a makeshift town ruled by a ruthless despot named Carnegie (Gary Oldman). Carnegie is an intellectual. Like Eli, he is one of the few people left who can read, but he is also a man of ambition. He desires to rebuild human civilization and become the master of a series of towns like this one, but he only needs one thing—he needs a particular book, which he tirelessly sends his minions to find. For Carnegie it is a text that possesses power—he who reads the book can interpret it however he desires. And people will follow as long as he uses words from the book.
After Eli whips a gang of Carnegie’s men in a bar fight, Carnegie attempts to recruit Eli, tempting him with food, liquor, and a woman named Solara (Mila Kunis). Eli goes beyond simply standing strong with his convictions; he shares a small portion of his faith with Solara by teaching her to pray. Eli is disturbed when Solara discovers that he is in possession of a book, which is his prized possession. While Solara lacks the ability to read or understand the significance of the book, she knows that Eli is different.
As the movie progresses, the viewer discovers that we are thirty years passed the last war which ended when the sky was opened and a powerful light scorched the face of the earth. After the survivors emerged out of hiding, they blamed religion and the Bible for the devastation and all Bibles were collected and burned. The sole surviving text rests in the possession of Eli!
Ultimately, Eli escapes the town with Solara, with Carnegie on his heels in pursuit of the book. The interaction with Solara changes Eli until he deviates from his mission and rescues her from a band of roaming thieves who desire to rape and eventually eat her. After killing her attackers, the two continue westward until they are forced to battle Carnegie and his men with the help of an elderly couple who has a long history of eating those who stop for tea. At the end of the battle, Eli is forced to choose between his Bible and Solara’s life. After relinquishing the holy text, Eli is left for dead. Solara returns to Carnegie, taking him the book he is sure will give him power over all people on earth.
The story ends with an astonishing surprise twist that changes Eli’s defeat into victory. Rather than reveal this ending for readers who plan to see the movie, let me simply say there are clues and predictions along the way that point the viewer toward this climax.
The Book of Eli is more than just another apocalyptic movie—it is a commentary on contemporary evangelicalism and religious abuses in society. The movie has a lot to teach today’s church.
In the movie are three sets of characters: those that roam the earth, Carnegie and his men, and Eli. The first group are those outside of civilization, who survive by eating human flesh. Unfortunately, the over consumption of human flesh causes neurological damage and death. These characters symbolize the lust of the flesh and the consuming nature of sin and our own appetites. This group is easy to find in our contemporary religious landscape. They are not necessarily self-consumed, but they are controlled and destroyed by their animalistic lusts and desires.
The next major group is Carnegie and his men, who are determined to control the Bible and use it to control the masses. Carnegie believes that the words of scripture have power, but he fails to realize that their true meaning is not about control. Their true meaning is about human freedom, devotion to God, and compassion to humankind. Like the roaming cannibals, one can also see this second group every day, those who use religion for their own purposes or as a means of control to enslave others.
Eli symbolizes the last and most important group—those devout “people of the book,” evangelicals! His highest mission is to protect the text, which he usually keeps hidden. As stated above, Eli places the protection of the book ahead of everything, including the principles of justice. Several times Eli is faced with protecting those who cannot protect themselves from the aggression of this world. Early in the movie, he fails to protect an innocent woman from rape and several times he fails to free women trapped in slavery.
The early Eli can be seen often in our theological communities. He is a theologian who puts the preservation of religion and the “sacred text” ahead of the principles, which the text teaches. His obsession with hiding and protecting the text borderlines on the worship of the Bible. Many devout evangelicals, like Eli, are willing to destroy all those who stand in the way of their mission.
How often have we placed the worship of the text ahead of the protection of the innocent or the fulfillment of the principles of justice found in the holy writ? How often have people been destroyed for the sake of religion? The early Eli represents this tendency in our modern day churches, the tendency to protect the text, yet miss its message. By viewing the early Eli and Carnegie, one is able to see why the screenwriters and directors proclaim that the Bible destroyed the world. It was destroyed by those who followed the paths of early Eli and Carnegie. Not until Eli embraces the ideas of justice and compassion found in the text, does he (and the viewer) discover the true purpose of the book and salvation.
The last of the major themes in the movie is the contrast between those who can see and those who cannot. Not until the end of the movie does the viewer learn that Eli is at least partially blind, if not completely without sight. He is unable to see the world. It is at this moment that his earlier statement, “walk by faith, not by sight,” becomes more powerful. During the movie only two characters are able to read from the Bible—Eli and Solara’s mother. The imagery is gripping—in a world desperate for the water of life only those who are blind can truly read from the book that quenches that thirst.
The Book of Eli is a powerful movie for those who can perceive its message. Many will reject it for its religious themes, and others will reject it because it challenges their religion. Some Christian’s may reject the movie for it brutality and profanity. But for those with eyes to see, the movie reminds us that the religious often contribute to the ugliness of this world along with the secular.
In a sense, this movie is like a good science fiction film. It transports the viewer to another world and forces them to confront their own social fears, prejudices, and destructive assumptions.
Response by David A. Thomas, Sarasota, FL
Monty M. Self and I are on the same page when he notes that movies can provide an escape, but they can also transform viewers. My way of putting it is, movies are rhetorical because they are social texts. They use narrative, the sound track, and visual imagery to influence attitudes to either reinforce or subvert our values, both as a culture, and as individuals.
The Book of Eli is such a social text. It intends to make a spiritually significant statement, to be more than mere entertainment, although the star power of Denzel Washington (who is a devout Christian in real life), the kung fu action sequences (he did all his own stunts), and the romantic sub-plot are certainly entertaining enough.
This movie is one of several end-of-the-world sci-fi scenarios that Hollywood has offered recently. A lone protagonist struggles to preserve a treasured value against destruction by an overwhelming evil force. Redemption is achieved when the protagonist overcomes evil, and there is a new avenue of hope for the future. We have previously critiqued The Children of Men in this journal. Yet another similar movie, The Road, based on Cormac McCarthy’s bestselling novel, was in the theaters this year. The Book of Eli is the most biblical of all these epics, no pun intended.
Mr. Self is correct that The Book of Eli is self-consciously centered on religious themes. It is the most explicitly religious movie of the year, given that the “McGuffin,” or the prize being fought over by the good guy and the bad guys, is the Holy Bible, which both parties value because of its divine attributes. The primary value conflict in The Book of Eli symbolizes the ongoing issues of many real contemporary religious conflicts: what is the true meaning and the proper use of the power of the Bible in life and in our society? Hence the title of Mr. Self’s essay, Evangelicalism’s Misuse of the Text.
The reader may agree or disagree with his specific interpretations, but not with the important function of movies as social texts. It is not my role either to endorse or to challenge his criticisms of the misuses of evangelicalism in these pages. The reader will determine whether the critic’s take on the story is true, in keeping with other stories one knows to be true, or whether it tells the whole story without leaving out important aspects. Those are the tests of narrative rationality. I am pleased that Mr. Self ventured to contribute his critique to the ongoing conversation.
