'The Book of Eli' - The Bible on the Big Screen

I saw The Book of Eli today. Aesthetically, and conceptually it's very similar to The Road. Both are post-apocalyptic. Just like The Road we don't know much about what caused the apocalypse. And just like the protagonists in The Road are 'the good guys' who are 'carrying the fire' to the West coast, so too is Denzel Washington's Eli. Though in this case 'the fire' is something more tangible than it was in The Road. It's a Bible. More on that shortly. It's pretty strange for two movies released so close to each other to have so many similarities. And both share similarities with Children of Men as well, which I pointed out in my note on The Road.

The fact that he's carrying a Bible isn't really a spoiler, this is known pretty early in the movie, although it oddly isn't referred to as a Bible until almost the very end. Prior to that it's just "that book", or "this book", but it's obvious from the outset what book it is, since Eli reads passages from it, and it has a cross on it. It's a bit humorous to me that they don't just call it a Bible, and my guess is that they didn't for fear of making the movie feel too 'preachy' or heavy handed for general audiences. And yes, just saying the word 'Bible' a lot of times is probably what Hollywood considers 'preachy'.

Eli is wandering through a post-apocalyptic America attempting to reach the coast with a book. He has heard a voice tell him that that is his mission. He stops in a city along the way where he meets a leader, and builder of a town in the midwest played by Gary Oldman. Oldman's characters has his goons out searching for a specific book because he believes with the words in that book he can become more powerful. He can use the words in that book to rule other towns, other people (because almost all books were burned after or during the apocalypse, so he believes this particular book and these particular words can have that effect, especially since not many people can read). Eli just happens to have the book he's looking for. But Eli is one bad dude, and kills a bunch of Oldman's goons and escapes. Oldman gives chase, and things develop from there.

I liked the movie thematically, but I think technically it wasn't that great. Specifically my major complaint is with the aesthetic. The sky is painfully fake-looking, and obnoxiously, obviously green-screened. In this aspect The Road created a realistic, interesting aesthetic where this movie did not. It's really bad. The shots of land, the sets, and the locations are actually fairly well done. It's only the sky that looks fake and bad. This is a little nitpicky, but it annoyed me. Also, too many of the characters look and feel like Hollywood actors. The Road made Robert Duvall and Guy Pearce so ragged and beat up they were hardly recognizable. Here all the actors look like they have had pampered lives, but they're supposed to be living in these horrible circumstances. So most of my complaints are with the production design, casting and general aesthetic. These are somewhat superficial issues, but important when making a movie.

The most interesting thing to me was that the central plot device was a Bible. This is pretty rare for a mainstream, big budget Hollywood film. And it wasn't used in a derisive manner. So that was a pleasant surprise. If it weren't for that the movie would be a pretty dull and run-of-the-mill action flick. Though Washington and Oldman are both great, as usual. The story is decent, and there are some good action sequences, specifically the shootout that occurs at the old people's house. Overall I enjoyed it and would recommend it, with some reservations on the technical side.

Massachusetts and Personality Politics

"In the television age, people do not so much agree or disagree with politicians as like or dislike them." - Neil Postman

The results of yesterday's election in Massachusetts offer a stunning confirmation of this statement. A Rasmussen poll from just yesterday shows Obama's approval-disapproval ratio in Massachusetts at 53/37. This on the same day that the state voted in a Republican Senator. In a state that has 65% of it's voters registered as Democrats. In a state where one of the most liberal Senators sat for 30 years. Following two election cycles where Republicans were resoundingly rejected, and a Democratic president took office, winning the presidential election by a wide margin. This is the climate under which a huge underdog Republican won a seat as Massachusetts state Senator.

How does one explain the continued relatively high approval rating of Obama, at least in this state, while Brown's victory represents a pretty strong rebuke of Obama's policies and performance? By noting the disconnect between personality and policy in the minds of voters.

There are always innumerable factors to weigh when analyzing results like this, but the following is my best guess as to what is happening in Massachusetts, and macrocosmically in the country as a whole. As noted above Obama still has a fairly solid approval-disapproval ratio in Massachusetts. That is; people still tend to have a favorable view of Obama the person, the speaker, the figure, despite apparently not being all that enthralled with his either his performance or his policies. People are still out of work, and many more are going out of work, and they see the Democrats, with super-majorities in both houses, accomplishing literally nothing at all on that front. And the one front where they are at least attempting something (healthcare reform), they are failing miserably. If voters in Massachusetts were so inexorably committed to the policy of universal healthcare, or to the Democratic economic platform and job-creating plan, then they should vote for a Democrat in a race that's as high profile and pivotal as this race was. The fact that they didn't means that there has been a change of attitude toward Obama and the Democrat's policies and performance. Though not a huge change on the issue of Obama himself, as a person. Voters can, and do, separate the two things.

Some might contend that Coakley just ran a bad campaign and Brown just ran a good one, and that the results aren't a referendum on Obama's policies or on the Democratic party as a whole. It's difficult to make that case given the political make-up of Massachusetts. Plenty of huge underdogs have run brilliant campaigns against lackadaisical incumbent opponents/parties before, and still lost. In fact this is precisely what happens in most cases, especially in a state where the registered voters are heavily one party or the other. It most often doesn't matter much how well, or how poorly you campaign in a state like Massachusetts, the Democrat should almost always win regardless. And they do. Which means there has to be other factors at play with this upset. And as I stated above it seems to be a surging conservatism, and a resounding rejection of Obama's policies, and the Democratic party as a whole that were the factors.

Not to mention the recent negative stigma carried by the title 'Republican'. It doesn't matter how poor a candidate Coakley was. She couldn't be bad enough for an extremely liberal state to elect a Republican, a pariah Republican, over her and take Ted Kennedy's seat in the senate for no good reason. But there was a reason. People got their 'change' and realized change for change's own sake isn't an inherently good thing. Sometimes change means change for the worse.

In Very Mild Defense of Pat Robertson

Hopefully the title is enough of a disclaimer. Certainly he said something stupid, and what is worse, said it at a very poor time. If he had made the same statement about Haiti a week before the events in Haiti I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have made the news, and even if it did, not very many people would have cared.

Most of the criticism I've heard leveled against him was along the lines of "Well, even if he thinks that is true, that isn't important now, what's important now is helping these people." Which is of course true. The ironic thing to me, in light of that criticism, is that the context in which Robertson made the statement was while urging people to help in any way they could. The comment came in the midst of some televised campaign to garner donations for Haiti and was bookended by humanitarian pleas for people to give and to help in any way that they could, and I'm sure his program raised a bunch of money. What he said may have been dumb, and misguided, but he said it while doing a tangible service for the people of Haiti. Certainly doing more good than I ever could hope to do for them. Which doesn't excuse his statement, but makes me a little hesitant to be too critical since, if put on a scale, the good that he was doing most likely outweighed the negative of a stupid, tasteless remark.