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Thursday, April 22, 2010

'The Book of Eli'

David from 'David and Margaret At the Moviesdescribes this movie as an "ultra-right-wing The Road."  I'll let the viewers at home make up their own mind, it certainly felt like a moralistic Mad Max.  David is also right in that for post-apocalyptic film, the Road sets a new benchmark of despairing beauty and realism which cinematically The book of Eli fails to meet. (Did anyone else feel Denzel Washington was reprising his role in Man on Fire?  ) My brother and I enjoyed it because we are  aficionados of anything post-apocalyptic, fans of classics like the Postman, 12 Monkeys Mad Max and Reign of Fire.  Interestingly Eli is a sort of violent Augustine, preserving the faith amid the ruins of the Roman American Empire.  The movie reflects a sort of broad American evangelicalism, revering the Bible and inclined to moralism.  However I kept wondering what if the movie had been funded by the Sydney Anglicans.  Roving preachers along the ruined Hume Highway!