I saw The Book of Eli a week ago,  and I was surprised to find that “the book” that “Eli” had was,  in fact,  the Bible.  The story was an interesting statement as far as the role the Bible played.   The “bad guy” was after the Bible,  since it was the ,  reportedly,  the LAST COPY remaining after some post-apocalyptic authority (kind of unclear WHO that was)   pronounced all books banned,  and the Bible in particular.   The “bad guy” had this view of the Bible similar to that of Hitler in The Raiders of the Lost Ark, pursuing the location of the ark in order to wield it’s “magical power” in his favor.   The bad guy also implied that he could “use” passages in it to persuade everybody of anything he wanted.  

That’s about as far as the details go,  and Eli,  as a “devoted student” who had committed the entire Bible to memory,  nevertheless is a bit of a human power weapon himself,  wielding “Neo” type moves and precision shooting of his gun and wielding of his massive Rambo-like Green Beret knife.  So , in a real and literal sense,  Eli is also a  “power wielder” even as he is “the keeper and protector of the book”.  Or so the story goes.   With all the testimony he gives to the young girl about the way God  led him to take the book to safety and preservation on the West Coast,  he doesn’t seem to have any notion of the relationship between his  lethal power wielding ,  and the message of that book,  nor does “the voice” (presumably, God) have anything to say about that.  But that’s not all that surprising,  given that there are many, many “Americanized Christians” who see no problem in the lethal strategy in “defense” against “bad guys”.  Of course,  the “bad guys” here are particularly ugly and slimy,  so it’s not so big of a deal to pick em’ off and slice ‘em up.  And besides,  they will kill you if you don’t kill them. 

Of course,  it could be that “the voice” could be OTHER than God.  After all,  the “bad guy” will claim to be a “keeper of the book” himself,  albeit,  from the point of view of the story,  for his own selfish purposes.  But what are we to make of Eli’s vision, set alongside of his “journey” which involves,  as I mentioned,  a “military tank”-like lethal defense of the book as he makes his way to the destination?  Could that be,  underneath it all,  yet another “ideology” based “wielding” of the book?  I seriously doubt the writer has this in mind.  From where I stand,  my guess would be that the writer has a view of the Bible as a book of poetry and inspiration, rather than any kind of alternate, world-questioning, revolutionary proposal or manifesto. The “real world” that we have “out there”  (in contrast to the nice,  “inner life” of serenity “in here,  in our heart”) requires that we take with us ,  “out there”,  a “pragmatic”, “rational” ideology presented to us and drilled into us by our American culture.  (And yes,  many other cultures have their own versions of this that keep the wars burning and conflicts arising) 

In the end,  The Book of Eli avoids any exploration of what “the book”  might say about the preservation of life as God intended it.  It seems to prefer the “favorites”  that are often described as “beautiful” (ie The 23rd Psalm),  on which most can agree.  There are a lot of “beautiful” uses of prose.  The “attractiveness” of the Bible to “the powers” begins to wane when it begins to cause questions to be raised about the ideology and implementation of that ideology by those powers.

(As a movie,  I enjoyed it as movies go.  As a Blu-Ray disc,  I was a bit frustrated by the lack of color,  given that the world was all dusty and gray in the post-apocalyptic setting,  and I suppose they wanted to have the “fresh unspoiled” world burst of color effect near the end as they approached the West Coast. Every now and then,  during the rest of the movie,  when a ray of sun falls on Eli,  some deeper color shows up.   The rest of the movie is tinted sort of dusty or “brown-ish”.  That’s film artistry.  I guess it works. Maybe.)