The Book of Eli

Seen at: Carmike 10, at 7 pm on Jan. 22

The movie year 2010 got off to a late start with me, with this entry. It had been out a couple weeks already. I hadn't heard many reviews, except for my father, during a family gathering. "Have you seen Book of Eli? I heard it's the dumbest movie of all time."

That's like my dad---offer a strong opinion on a movie he had no intention of ever seeing.

"Haven't seen it yet," I said. As I've learned, the "dumbest movie of all time" tends to come along about every three weeks.

So having been cornered in my expectations already, I spent most of the movie trying to like it.

Here's what I liked about it: the post-apocalyptic world is well styled. It feels like post doomsday. The title character (Denzel Washington) is mysterious and sympathetic in this milieu.

The story worked mostly throughout. I didn't see why anyone thought it was "dumb" until the ending. In blunt terms, the movie is simply ruined by a plot revelation at the end that makes absolutely no sense at all, and calls into question the authenticity of the entire story up to that point.

Genre replacement has become one of my favorite subjects to think about, in regard to movies. That is, how have genres themselves changed over the decades, and into the Postmodern era.

Hollywood doesn't make classic westerns anymore, or rarely does (last true one was 2008's Appaloosa). Instead the post-apocalyptic genre has replaced it. That is, we no longer focus on an idealized American past in which individuals struggled to build society in the absence of external authority (old American self-reliance). Instead we focus on a negative idealized future (set in the same landscape), in which external authority is wiped out. Same situation, except one is hopeful whereas the other is mostly pessimistic. Instead of dust storms, we have nuclear winter. Instead of rustlers and Indians, we get cannibals.

And whew, they are making a lot of, uh, westerns lately. Makes you want to stock up on canned food.