Over the past few months, I've heard a lot of good things about this film. I didn't purposely post this in my film review blog, because I wanted to talk a little more about the content of film, not so much the film itself...if that makes any sense. I'll try my best to avoid any spoilers...
I love post-apocalyptic films. For some reason, it's of great interest to me to see how the human race would handle such things like nuclear war, fallout, or just extinction in general. It's probably why I'm drawn to the Terminator franchise. However, this film doesn't deal with advanced cyborgs that look like us, or the events that lead us to a war of that scope. There's no fish people running around with webbing between their fingers and toes, and no dreadlocked aliens coming to dinner.
We get the general idea early on that the world is wiped out, cities leveled, and anarchy reigns over territories. Money is of no value. Things we now take for granted, are treasure. Like, books, water and simple comfort of a warm bed. In this film, the war or fallout took place so long ago, knowledge of religion and law has been long since forgotten, or lost. People have no idea who God is, or where they came from as a species, with the exception of a few educated people in places of power.
Denzel Washington plays a character who has a vision of a society that needs brought to order. A society or collective race rather, that simply needs direction. The simple, age-old-cliche solution - bring order to chaos. How do we do that? Yep. With a book. But not just any book. The book. That's right. The Bible. You can figure all this out just from watching the trailers, so don't worry, I'm not ruining anything. Gary Oldman, who I think is freakin' great, plays a man who's in charge of town that needs guidance, or direction. Remember that $2 bill that your grandpa gave you on your birthday? That has no value here. But your bottle of water does. Hell, people kill for it here. People need direction. People need purpose. What better way to provide that than with the book. The book. Knowledge is power. Religion is power. It can give societies power to rule, or govern your way of life. The Roman Catholic Church did it. Islam did it. You can see where I'm going with this. Imagine that. A society of people with no order. No law. No knowledge of evolution. What once was, is lost. But, the Bible could change that. Or could it? If you were in that situation, and suddenly a book is found, describing the origins of life, sins of man and miracles, would you follow it? Or would you follow its message? Would it be enough?
It was an interesting film, both from a viewer's perspective and a speculative one. It leaves much open for debate and will leave you talking with your friends about it afterwards.
