Thirty years after Armageddon, when America has become a ravaged wasteland of scorched earth and deserted cities, one man travels alone carrying a long forgotten book to a destination unknown. Led by a voice in his head he walks West, guarding the one thing that could inspire humanity, or enslave it if it should fall into the wrong hands.
The film, The Book of Eli, is set in a desert landscape, with no law or morality. The protagonist Eli, played by Denzel Washington, is just a man who is following his faith and protecting a sacred book from the one who wants to exploit it, Carnegie (played by Gary Oldman). A self-appointed despot, Carnegie seeks to obtain the book to lull his people into complacency. This action-adventure looks like it has come out of the pages of a graphic novel with the blazing sun overhead dulling all beauty and life.
The Hughes brothers, Allen and Albert, took Chris Whitta's screenplay and created a modern day gospel filmed in desolate New Mexico. In Hughes brothers' style, the fraternal twins divided their workload with Allen spending most of the pre-production overseeing casting and the script, bringing on board Jennifer Beals, Mila Kunis and Ray Stevenson, while Albert focused on production design and cinematography.
Laura Janecka chatted with Allen and Albert, discussing the religious undertones of the film, blind faith, society's need for a higher belief and their personal experiences (and traumas) growing up with a spiritual father and a Pagan mother.
PT: This film has significant religious themes, from "the book" which we assume is the Holy Bible to the prayers Eli recites. Are you both religious?
Allen: I have a macrobiotic spiritual base. That would be all the Indigenous, peaceful tribes, in North America. It is the Great Spirit, whatever we refer to as God. They hold nature and animals in high-esteem because they are all one. When I was younger I was more judgmental of people of certain faiths, Catholic, Christian, I would just judge people based on of what they believed.
Albert: I call myself an atheist. And, by the way, the original writer of the film is an atheist too, which shocked me after I read the script. I tried to keep it a secret, because I didn't want people to pre-judge it. And then Allen let the cat out of the bag during one interview.
PT: Is it safe to assume that you never attended church or had any type of religious upbringing?
Allen: Our mom is not a devout Christian; she's Pagan.
Albert: We did [attend church] sometimes, when we were little with our father. Church used to be scary to us. The one experience I remember when we were 4 years old: this woman caught the Holy Ghost and fell from the second story balcony to the ground in the aisle. She got right up and went to the preacher, and was saved. She took no injuries. She fell plain up the second story balcony from the Holy Ghost. That jarred us, that freaked us out.
PT: How did your individual beliefs affect the making of this film?
Allen: It was deeply affecting me. It was an open challenge to use a book that you don't personally believe in. So I looked at the movie and thought I have to be mindful and respectful of Christians and the bible, but my brother and I also have to sing through this and touch everyone.
Albert: You have to believe in the mythology of the movie. Surely people don't believe there are guys with light sabers fighting in outer space, many of thousands of years from now. Surely people don't believe there's a middle Earth with hobbits, but you go to the cinema to escape and to believe or have faith in the story. I have to believe in the story.
PT: So what was it about this script that enticed you to take it on?
Allen: The script was very simple. I read it and said to my brother, "We have to do this." This gave me chills. When you're not thinking about the paycheck...
Albert: Allen called me up and said, "Read this." I read it and I thought: "This is cool." I called him and said, "I just don't know about this religious element." And he sounded deflated and said, "Well, just sleep on it." So I slept on it. A week earlier, he had been playing this Trent Reznor song, Zero-Sum. When I went to sleep that night I had a dream about the movie and it was the song that got me into it. There wasn't a mention of God in that song, it was the lyrics and emotions that hit me. So I started writing our manifesto, our movie.
PT: Why do you give the Bible such power in the film, making Eli a hero and Carnegie a villain?
Allen: I think people would grab those words (from the Bible) and do what Carnegie does. I don't think Carnegie is really a bad guy, I think he's just very ambitious and he just wants to (use the Bible) to bring civility back to humanity. He just got intoxicated with it. We're a society that should do more communicating with that book than we should have people telling us what those words mean.
PT: If we were to be thrust into a post-apocalyptic world, would people still seek some form of religion?
Albert: I think people are looking for something. If you look back to the origins of the Bible that damned near was a post-apocalyptic environment. There was no hope, little food, little water, not that much infrastructure in these places, and people needed something to believe in to keep them going.
PT: So society needs to have a higher order?
Allen: If you look into the galaxy, at the planets, at the Earth, at the natural wonders of Earth, there's an energy that's greater than us. You better have faith in that. It gives you purpose, it's hard to get out of bed every morning without it. Life becomes very difficult because you're not connected to anything.
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