The Book of Eli (2010) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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Eli’s a-comin’, and he’s comin’ to get ya!

The Book of Eli delivers an apocalyptic vision of the future where lawlessness and selfishness reign supreme. It shows that one man can still be a force for good with the right skills and a little faith.

First Impressions

In a dystopian apocalyptic future, Denzel Washington is a tough guy roaming the wasteland, cutting off people’s hands who touch him. He appears to be protecting the last copy of the bible. He wanders into a small, desert town run by a preacher (maybe, maybe not) played by Gary Oldman who wants “that book.” As expected, things do not go well for anyone. Please turn to page Saturday, in The Book of Eli.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

In a near-future world, 30 years after an apparent nuclear war decimated the population and tore a hole in the sky, a lone man named Eli (Denzel Washington) walks the roads headed west. He hunts for food, seeks water in the arid and parched environment, and single-handedly fends off hijackers who try to steal his possessions. On his trip through the wastelands, he sees a group of bikers attack two people, killing them and taking their possessions. He reminds himself to stay on his path and that it’s not his concern.

Entering a nearby town where he hopes to get supplies, Eli sees the same bikers arrive and enter the Orpheum, a brothel and bar for the town. The bikers, led by Martz (Evan Jones) visit the town leader, Carnegie (Gary Oldman), giving him a bag of books they confiscated on the road. Carnegie is looking for a specific book, which is left unsaid–but becomes clear that it’s a Bible. None of the bikers read, nor know specifically what they’re looking for and usually return with junk. Eli is provoked by the bikers and others who see him as an outsider, and he single-handedly defeats 20 attackers.

Impressed by the man’s skill, Carnegie offers Eli a job and forces him to stay the night. He sends his mistress’s daughter, Solara (Mila Kunis), to seduce Eli, but he rebuffs her instead offering her some of his meal and a prayer of thanksgiving. Solara repeats the prayer to her blind mother, Claudia (Jennifer Beals), the next day which convinces Carnegie that Eli has the book he’s looking for. Eli attempts to leave town the next morning but Carnegie, his enforcer Redridge (Ray Stevenson), and more toughs attempt to stop him. Carnegie is wounded in the leg during a shootout and Eli leaves town.

Carnegie wants the book, believing he can use it as a weapon to reshape this town, and others. He takes Redridge and a small squad by truck to hunt for Eli, who has set out on foot. Solara has also followed Eli but becomes detained by another group of Hijackers. Eli saves her and allows her to stay with him. He explains he has the only copy of the Book that wasn’t destroyed in the war, or burned afterward. A voice in his head led him to its location and directed him to head west. He explains ‘faith’ to Solara, who has no concept of the act.

On their journey west, Eli and Solara encounter an elderly couple in a lone house in the wasteland. George and Martha (Michael Gambon and Frances de la Tour) invite them in for tea and food. Eli recognizes them as cannibals by the tremors in their hands, but as they attempt to leave, Redridge, Carnegie, and the others show up and shoot up the house. George and Martha are killed, and Carnegie shoots Eli in the stomach and takes the locked book. Solara is taken as well but escapes from the caravan and goes back to find Eli missing. Grievously injured, Eli is continuing to walk west with no supplies. She assists him as they enter the greener hills around San Francisco. He recognizes Alcatraz from his visions and they row a boat to the island.

Armed guards take them in and take them to Lombardi (Malcolm McDowell) who explains that the island is a storehouse of the world’s literature and art they will use to start again. Eli shares that he has a copy of the King James Bible in his possession, which confuses Solara since she saw Carnegie take it. It is revealed that Eli is blind, and the Bible he carried was in braille. Carnegie opens the book but is unable to read it. Claudia feigns ignorance at being able to read braille and lets Carnegie’s infection kill him. Eli recites the entirety of the book to Lombardi who transcribes it and uses the printing press to make a copy for their library. Eli dies and Solara takes his weapons and gear to return home to continue his legacy.

“I was carrying and reading it everyday, got so caught up in protecting it, I forgot to live by what I’d learnt from it.” – Eli

History in the Making

The 2010 film The Book of Eli was not a film I had seen before. I had stayed away from it because it appeared to be a standard post-apocalyptic survival story, even with some top-name actors. It was directed by The Hughes Brothers (Menace II Society & From Hell) with a story and screenplay by Gary Whitta. This was Whitta’s first film work and his first solo writing credit. He would go on to co-write Rogue One: A Star Wars Story six years later. Knowing that, even 6 years later, should have been enough to prod me to see this film. It was an interesting and unique enough story, even though it felt like a mix of other post-apocalyptic films. Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman were both fun to watch as the hero and villain respectively, and seeing Mila Kunis in something other than a comedy changed my impression of her acting skills.

The apocalypse only plays a small part in the story. While the film has a lot to say about religion and society, it’s very much not a religious film. It doesn’t present any one doctrine over another, other than perhaps “be good to one another,” which I’m pretty sure that no theology can lay claim to. After watching the trailer (where it’s made clear that the “book” in question is the Bible), the title of the film seems clear: it’s about the book that Eli is carrying with him. After a global collapse and a decimating war, the Bible is a prized treasure being protected by Eli. Audiences may believe he’s a member of a religious order that is tasked with preserving it. But, things go in a different direction. After watching the film it becomes clear that Eli is the book of the title. His ability to memorize the entirety of the tome makes him as valuable as the physical artifact, which plays out in the conclusion of the story.

Perhaps the only thing that feels off about the film is Eli’s blindness. There have been plenty of shows and films about skilled blind warriors (from Zatoichi to Daredevil) that familiarize audiences with the superhuman abilities of blind warriors, so the skills Eli possesses are not necessarily in question. And it’s also not necessarily Washington’s portrayal of Eli. But there’s something about the way the character is presented. His senses are preternatural even when compared to the other blind person in the film, Claudia. She was born blind, while Eli was presumably blinded by either the “war of the sun after,” based on his question to her. He is seen removing his sunglasses when going inside, presumably so that the audience wouldn’t question his disability, yet there’s no sign that something may be different about him. In hindsight, Eli doesn’t read signs and skirts issues where he’s presented with something that needs to be seen. It only feels like the filmmakers really wanted the reveal that he is blind in the final act so that Carnegie isn’t able to get what he seeks (defeating the bad guy). Maybe the viewer is supposed to take a more mythological look at his character. Perhaps his blindness is a gift from God who also affords protection of His messenger throughout the film.

Genre-fication

Post-apocalyptic films had been around for decades by the time The Book of Eli was released. Probably the most famous film of this genre is The Road Warrior (aka Mad Max 2) which depicts roaming bands of mutants and humans using the remaining bits of ‘guzzoline’ in a six-cylinder spectacle of car stunts. These types of movies can also have a Western motif to them, like something out of a Sergio Leone spaghetti Western. Examples include films like A Boy and His Dog, Damnation Alley, Waterworld (which flips a desert for a sea–but is still a similar tale), and Six-String Samurai. So too is The Book of Eli, although it attempts something different with its look. Rather than a painted desert, bright and vibrant, it uses color grading to diminish the majority of color in the film. Exteriors of the film look bleached out until it’s nearly a black-and-white film. This emphasizes the destruction of the atmosphere in some way and the harshness of the sun. Interiors tend to have a bit more color to them once characters come in out of the sun. While many other films were experimenting with color-grading around this time, The Book of Eli’s usage is at least motivated by the plot of the film and an artistic choice; rather than just using the look to make a film more edgy. Unfortunately, it still leaves a lot to be desired as it makes the contrast of the film a little too dark, losing some of the details that might otherwise be there.

But this is also a sci-fi film. The science-fiction elements of the film lie within the backstory. Thirty years prior to the start of the film, war broke out and decimated humanity and the planet. Many older individuals, with necessary knowledge, died, leaving only a small handful of characters from before: like Eli and Carnegie. Anyone under 30 years old, like Solara, has no idea about what the world used to be like, only knowing the rough, bright, apocalyptic world. The film even makes references to the sci-fi roots (as mentioned above), with a poster for A Boy and His Dog hanging behind Eli in the small room in which Carnegie lets him stay. For all intents and purposes, The Book of Eli is primarily a Western film. The main character, who doesn’t introduce himself until 90 minutes into the film (though a quick glimpse in his backpack reveals a K-Mart name tag labeled ‘Eli’), comes into town like the Man with No Name from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. There is a code in this world that Eli fights for. He protects the weak while traveling on his quest. Instead of a gun, he uses a razor-sharp machete–well, he uses a gun too, but not as his primary weapon. He must go up against the corrupt land baron that owns the town. The western hero even dies at the end, but not before defeating the bad guy and completing his quest.

Societal Commentary

As with other sci-fi films, The Book of Eli presents a narrative that attempts to show the audience something of their society reflected through the lens of an alternate future. On one hand, it’s a cautionary tale about the warlike nature of our society. Some moments in the past of this apocalyptic world led to the death of millions, the destruction of cities, and damage to the planet forcing humanity to revert to a less sophisticated society. Hunting for food and clean water became what each day was about. Small pockets of humans banded together, either as roving gangs taking what they need from travelers, or in towns where they rely on someone with power to take care of them–usually at a high cost. Yet while some portions of society, like Carengie’s down, devolve into the worst possible types of people, there are a few others who are looking to rebuild society. Lombardi and his group choose to save the best things about society in hopes of rebuilding it, though one must wonder how they would integrate groups like Carenegie’s back into the world after their descent into lawlessness.

On the other hand, the film looks at the roots of faith. It uses two characters, primarily, Eli and Carnegie. Eli explains to Solara that he heard a voice in his head clear as day, and instructed him where to find the book and what to do with it. Whether or not the audience believes in the divine interpretation of what Eli heard is beside the point. The character heard a call and answered it. Once he was led to the book, just as the voice said, Eli believed wholeheartedly in his mission; by faith. He explains what that is to Solara, who was not taught of the Bible–or apparently common words, that faith is “that you know something, even if you don’t know something.” It’s about believing in the unseen and the unknown for personal reasons. Carnegie also has a faith of sorts, but it is driven by greed and power. He wants to find the Bible, because to him it’s not just a book but a weapon. “A weapon aimed right at the hearts and minds of the weak and the desperate,” he says. He wants to use it to control the masses while he profits off their labor or donations. His faith in the book is that it can do what it used to do in the “before times.” It’s a chilling thought that in a world that is already suffering, he wants to capitalize on that suffering for his own gain.

The Science in The Fiction

The film gives no reason for the war (Eli speculates it may have been over religion), and no explanation about specifically what happened to the world. Thermonuclear radiation, destruction of the ozone layer, and destruction of societal infrastructure all appear to be the results of the battles. Based on Eli’s questions to Claudia, people were burned and blinded by the blasts during the war (as Eli appears to be; his back is a mass of scars) or burned and blinded by the sun afterward. Most characters take care to protect themselves from the sun by wearing at a minimum sunglasses while outside. The Engineer (Tom Waits) looks to trade for ChapStick, but Eli only has cat grease (from the grilling of his feline meal the night before). Interestingly, Redrick wanders around with a bald head, and no hat. Why his head isn’t a sunburned mess is anyone’s guess. Perhaps Carnegie has more sunscreen than he admits to.

When Eli enters town, one of the first questions people ask of him is to present his hands as they look for visible tremors. It’s unclear at the time what this is about. But later in the film when George and Martha are introduced, Eli explains to Solara that they’re cannibals as evidenced by their shaking hands. This is a real neurological disorder called Kuru, which is contracted by eating infected human tissue. It leads to loss of coordination, tremors, dementia, and eventually death–as it did with George and Martha. Though their death came from an explosive, specifically, it can all be traced back to their cannibalism and inviting Eli into their house.

The Final Frontier

The character of Solara seems to have been named after something relating to the sun (solar) in an homage to the battle, or perhaps as the first baby born afterward. She is a good woman, of a good mother, who both happen to align themselves with Carnegie for survival. He prostitutes Solara as a way to trick or entrap people to his bidding. But she is not a wanton woman. She is curious about Eli and his ways, which are different from anything she has seen before. She marvels at his faith and his skill with any manner of weapons. And because he was nice to her, offering her a prayer and a meal, she decides that he is a decent man worthy of help. After Eli’s death, Solara is seen donning his jacket and knife, saying that she is going to return to her town–presumably to take some of the faith and compassion back to her town. In a way she becomes his apostle, continuing to spread the “good word” even if it’s not the same words that he shared with her.

As of this writing, there is talk of a television series based on the film in the works. It is supposedly set decades before the film and will star John Boyega as Eli. One could see how an episodic TV show based on this story would work. A wise man, roaming the apocalyptic desert–like Caine from Kung Fu.  There are definitely interesting things that could be done with the idea, and if an apocalyptic series like The Walking Dead can be as successful as it has been (even though it deals with zombies instead of cannibals), then a Book of Eli show could run for quite a while.

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