Monday, May 10, 2010

Movie Review: The Book of Eli

Actually for me it was "El libro de los secretos." I saw this movie on Friday night with several young adults from church. It was the dubbed version-with Spain (peninsular) Spanish. They are the ones who lisp "ce," "ci," and "z" and the "s" is much thicker. This is not an accent I'm used to, and the way the movie is, I bet there are a lot of things I would strain my ear to understand in English. Oh yeah and the sound wasn't very good quality. I had to keep leaning over and asking my friend next to me, "What'd he say?" "What just happened?" Thankfully I'd done some homework, so I had a good idea of the plotline (thanks be to God, I would have been SO LOST if I hadn't!)
Basically, it's about a guy who lives in Post-Apocalyptic times (assumedly after the rapture and a lot else) and he is the only one who has a Bible. Now, this is clearly not realistic because we know that almost every hotel room in the world has a Gideon Bible in the bedside table drawer and it would be really hard to destroy all those Bibles. Just kidding, sort of. I doubt there are Gideon Bibles in every country, but I'm sure they're working on it!
So anyway, this guy (Eli) has a Bible and he is walking west across the US to a place where the Bible will be able to be printed again and the Word of God will be able to get into the hands of men once more. Not sure how relevant that is, but I'd rather not argue about whether or not there will be grace for those people, if that kind of situation could ever actually exist. But, anyway that's the setting. There is another guy who wants to get his hands on the Bible for some reason and so he is mean to Eli and tries to kill him. Eli manages to escape (because if he didn't the movie would end and it would suck). The guy had tried to use his daughter to seduce Eli, but that didn't really work. Well, kind of. The guy got what he wanted without his daughter being violated. And his daughter runs off after Eli because she knows he's different. She is very intrigued, but also very clueless. Eli won't let her touch the Bible though. He doesn't trust anyone. Well, pretty much no one trusts anyone. If there is a problem, all you have to do is kill the other person and everything is fine. In this sense, it's a total boy movie (as Mommy and I call them). Way too much blood and gore for my liking. I don't have a very high tolerance. It doesn't make me barf or anything, I just don't like it. Aren't you glad to know that?
So now I'm going to spoil the movie for you. The bad guy gets the Bible. He gets somebody to break its lock open and then writhes in anguish because, it's in Braille. I didn't realize Eli was blind until someone explained to me afterwards. I just thought he knew Braille. It's possible!
But, it doesn't really matter that the bad guy gets the book because Eli has the WHOLE BIBLE memorized. He dictates it to the guy at the printing place, they print it, Eli dies, I think the bad guy dies too. The end.

So, I didn't like the violence. But I realize the point. I just wish they didn't go through so much effort to make it. It was really hard to understand. Another they explained to me afterwards was that Eli says something about he got so caught up in protecting the Bible and getting it to the printer that he forgot to obey it and love others. (or something like that.) He killed a LOT of people over the course of the movie! Definitely had me questioning the validity of his faith! (because as the Bible says, "Faith without works is dead"). Oh and it was hard to see what was going on sometimes. The movie was basically all black and white/sepia ish with lousy lighting. I guess that was part of the point too of the setting (it was all deserty), but didn't make the movie any easier to follow.
But, the good thing that can be taken from this movie is the importance and value of the Bible, the Word of God. How many of us have a Bible and only take it to church on Sundays? How many of us have never made the effort to memorize a verse or a passage? I realize that memorizing isn't everyone's strength and that's ok. But I really encourage you to give it a try. I bet you can learn a verse in a week! How familiar are we with the Scriptures? The Bible itself says that it is "a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my paths." The Bible is the guidebook for life. We can't complain if we aren't reading the Word! God reveals Himself to us through it. If we claim to follow Christ, shouldn't we be interested in knowing Him? Along with praying, reading and really studying and soaking in the Bible is the best way to get to know Him. And I recommend that we do that now instead of trying to find out later... ;-)

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