The New Post-Apocalypse: The Book of Eli (2010) and The Road (2009)

Eli (Denzel Washington), from The Book of Eli, acts like an action hero. The post-apocalyptic world seems to be created by the director and screenwriters just to show the audience what a hero this Eli is. He is silent and distant and has a big knife, and is the protector of the last Bible in the world. God told him to go west and so he slashes his way forward through the ranks of evil Gary Oldman, who wants to have this book so he can control the masses around him.

The movie is a bit of a moral jumble, where the Bible is simultaneously good and bad and it is somehow acceptable that this violent and distant Eli is there to protect it. Now and then it rubbed me the wrong way. The story is replete with cliches and the ending is overwrought. Still this movie has a lot going for it. It has style and a bit of dark humor and it is always a pleasure to see Oldman playing a maniac.

The Road is the bleakest and most depressing post-apocalyptic movie I have seen so far. The movie has so little colors that it is almost black and white. The story isn’t about some post-apocalyptic hero who is untouchable in this new world, like Eli from The Book of Eli, or Mad Max or some Kevin Costner hero. It is about a regular man and his son, who he tries to protect. The boy grew up in this ravaged world and has no memories of the world before, when everything was good. His father reads him stories of how it was before the bombs fell.

Their daily lives revolve around food. Food and cold and a grey world of snow, ash and dead trees. In tense moments when they are in danger from gangs of armed men, the thought of suicide is never far away. If The Book of Eli is an action/dark comedy version of the post-apocalyptic story, then The Road is the harsh, real and philosophical variant. Flashbacks to the past, to the time when his wife was still there, have a warmer tone.

It is a kind of desperation the viewer can wallow in. Both movies give us pictures of a destroyed landscape that are perfectly horrifying and fantastically miserable. It is the destruction of the world as a form of art. The Road succeeds in this even more than The Book of Eli does. Like its characters and story, The Book of Eli overdoes the bleakness by pumping up the contrast, making shadows darker and the land a dry surface with bright orange colors. The Road is grey and cold, with more impressive views of dead forests and empty roads.

Overall, The Road is the better movie. It has little plot, but at the heart lies the relationship between the father and his son and therefore it is intense and personal, but also a bit slow. If you go for action and less depressing eye-candy, The Book of Eli is very satisfying.

IMDB: The Book of Eli, The Road

Book: Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

In the world of Guy Montag, the firemen’s hose does not spray water, but kerosene. It is a world were everything is backward, twisted, yet eerily familiar. People are discouraged to think, only talk about empty things and live like zombies, continuously entranced by empty popmusic and empty reality series on TV-walls. Books are illegal, and burned. It is the job of the firemen. Incidentally, fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which book-paper catches fire and burns.

Just read some of the famous opening lines:

“It was a pleasure to burn.

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black.”

As you can see already, Bradbury has a very visual style of writing, with great care of imagery and the rhythm of the words. Bradbury loves words. His poetic style is still unperfected and not as controlled as in his later works. Fahrenheit 451 was one of his earliest books, written at a young age. But it makes his novel fast, short and explosive, like a fire itself. It is also a bit quirky and over-the-top in its descriptions and metaphors, but its flaws make the novel actually more lovable. And more than 50 years after publication its messages are still glowing embers. This book refuses to be put out.

It is kind of distressing that some of Bradbury’s predictions have become recognisable in our modern times. This twisted world that he describes wasn’t the result of a twisted government, but it was the general tendency of the times. It was the overcrowded world, high on mass production and fast living. Fahrenheit 451 is about the loss of thinking, leading to the loss of books. But, predictably, Guy Montag the fireman sees the errors of his trade and starts an adventure of rebellion.


Like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Huxley’s Brave New World, this is a real dystopia classic and really worth reading. It has also spawned a reasonably good movie (1966), but that of course misses Bradbury’s virtuoso writing style.

Movie: Sherlock Holmes (2009)

The only thing I ever saw about Sherlock Holmes was the Disney adaptation The Great Mouse Detective. I have never read the original novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and I guess not many people have. Director Guy Ritchie has, and, him being such a fan of crime and comedy (and reaching his peak with Snatch), was the man for the job for a modern retelling.

Ritchie takes us back to the end of the 19th century, when science and superstition reigned together and the British Parliament was the center of the world. Sherlock Holmes is Doyle’s champion of science and deduction and, naturally, is pitted against an adversary with powers of black magic. What ensues is a great tale of action and adventure, a bit of love and a lot of humour in a gritty London (though not as over the top as, say, Tim Burton’s London from Sweeney Todd).

The success of Sherlock Holmes lies largely with the actors. The quirky Holmes (Downey Jr.), sober Dr. Watson and delightful femme fatale Adler (McAdams) remind me of another swashbuckling trio from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Sherlock Holmes almost turns into the Robert Downey Jr Show, as the Pirates movies almost turned into the Johnny Depp Show. Downey Jr shines in this role. Needless to say, I expect lots of Sherlock Holmes sequels and I would be more than happy to see them. Great Stuff!

IMDB: Sherlock Holmes

Movie: No Country for Old Men (2007)

This movie was praised as the best movie of 2007. It was a multiple oscar candidate (and winner) and the latest work of the Coen brothers (also known from The Big Lebowski, Fargo and more). Is it good? Yes it is, but it is a moviemaker’s movie, if you catch my drift. It is the kind of movie that will be shown as course material for movie students but naive or innocent theatre guests might stumble bewildered from their seats.

At the start of the movie it resembles a slow, standard action movie about a person shooting other persons. But it becomes a tense movie as it progresses. The Coen brothers know what they are doing and have complete control over every single shot, the way Quentin Tarantino has, only less obvious. It is also a very silent movie. There is almost no music, because music makes a movie more approachable and that is not part of the Coen’s agenda. As a result the whole cinema was dead silent, fixated on the screen.

What the Coens set out to do, is toy with the expectations of the viewer. Some might interpret the result as bad filmmaking, but the directors did it on purpose. Time and again they set up scenes, only to let them end completely different as expected from wellknown movie tropes. Systematically they tackled all the conventions of regular action movies, until the viewer loses all grip on what is happening. And exactly the same thing is happening to the main character. As the old deputee Tommy Lee Jones mumbles tiredly about how the world has changed, and how it doesn’t make sense any more, we know what he means. The Coens made us feel exactly like him.

Jones sums it up in his final speech just before the end credits roll. This movie is a rough country, and it made you, like Jones, and old man, unable to handle what is happening and there is no father out there to help you out. It is no country for old men.

IMDB: No Country for Old Men