A credible landscapeBy John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
Although Google vs. China is a long way from the apocalypse, the battle does underscore mankind's core belief in the rights and privileges of reading and learning. Attempts at suppressing that freedom, such as the book burning in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, have met with fierce opposition. Join that theme with the Bible and you have the motifs that underpin the post-apocalyptic Book of Eli with Denzel Washington as Eli.
The landscape has always been so in this genre: bleak, dark, dirty, with a scarcity of water and fuel, two commodities we currently hope to be abundant forever. The Hughes brothers as directors have created a credible landscape barren of virtue and full of vice. Not a whole lot of difference from Cormac McCarthy's The Road or the estimable Mad Max franchise. The strength is Denzel Washington's Eli, a combination of Will Smith's loner in I am Legend and Clint Eastwood's man with no name recurring in many forms throughout the Wild West in film and TV.
Washington brings gravitas to his character as Eli walks West, just as Viggo Mortensen does in The Road, both fulfilling the American mandate for young men to go west and discover. Only this time the heroes are world-weary middle-aged men seeking refuge in sun and water in the promised land of California.
As Eli presses on holding the last print edition of the Bible, he encounters the usual suspects of marauding bikers and seductive Sirens. Not to be left out of the stock denizens of the wasted world is warlord baddie Carnegie, played with over-the-top relish by Gary Oldman. (But then again, no one can go quite as far a Gene Hackman in The Quick and the Dead enjoying the role as Western tyrant in a little town just waiting for the likes of Russell Crowe with whom to have a showdown.) The Carnegie name evokes the common paradox of Western civilization wherein the great industrialist advances mankind with rich libraries and productive factories but gives the planet pollution and battles over ignorance.
The limitation of the film is its reliance on these traditional tropes and the host of previous futuristic stories that have told essentially the same tale of the loner setting things right for the world. But where is the major Siren you may ask. Mila Kunis as Solara, or the sunny one from the name, first is used by Carnegie to ensnare Eli, to no avail, and then becomes his acolyte, In one of the off-center touches of the film, Kunis looks as if she's ready to shop on Rodeo Drive, from her shiny face to her tight-fitting designer jeans.
Oh, well, no one should demand slavish adherence to reality in what amounts to an enjoyable fantasy with hints of what the world may look like according to Eli.
John DeSando teaches film at Franklin University and co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain
John DeSando teaches film at Franklin University and co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com