New releases go Post-Apocalypse Now
Movie-goers can experience many end-of-world scenarios
"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine" (Great Big Sea). The end of the world and its aftermath are not likely to make any of us "feel fine," should it occur in our lifetimes, but we can experience it vicariously through the imagination of writers and filmmakers alike.
Post-apocalyptic films have increased their visible presence in video stores lately with the release of The Book of Eli (directed by Albert and Allen Hughes) and The Road (directed by John Hillcoat and based on Cormac McCarthy's novel). These two films, which share a number of common characteristics, are representative of the worst and best of this genre.
The term Apocalypse is associated with the cataclysmic end of the world as we know it through pestilence (disease), war, famine and death. It is the imagination of what life could be, or would be, like for the survivors of a worldwide holocaust that The Book of Eli and The Road use as their starting point.
Both films are anchored by their settings, as you might expect. The cinematography features a wash of blue-grey tones where colour is conspicuously absent. Cameras pan across expanses of American territory showing a dearth of life and widespread evidence of destruction. Abandoned vehicles, or those containing powdery corpses, litter the landscape. Prominent highway overpasses, towering with jagged edges and jackknifed tractor trailers, suggest the suddenness of destruction and juxtapose the paradox of human engineering—simultaneously capable of wonders and horrors.
The constant search for food and water through scavenging is prominent in both stories, as are roving bands of villains who view other humans as commodities to be exploited for their meagre possessions (e.g. shoes), or in worst-case scenario, a source of food. Also prominent in both films is the journey motif. The protagonists journey on foot towards a destination that represents a better hope for survival.
The similarities dissipate after that. In The Book of Eli, Eli (Denzel Washington) is portrayed at the outset as a resourceful forager journeying west. However, he quickly takes on the mantle of a Western gunslinger who dispatches anyone who gets in his way. The audience discovers he's on a mission from God that involves protecting a sacred book.
Eli's opposition comes from Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a ruthless power-monger who wants the book for his own ignoble purposes. Throw in some Mad-Max-type vehicles and characters, and the story quickly devolves into a cartoonish escapade of violence that challenges all willing suspension of disbelief. While Denzel Washington is an actor who consistently earns my respect, he can't redeem a script that becomes just plain silly at times.
By way of contrast, The Road is much more powerful and disturbing as a story because it keeps its essence as a character study of how human beings survive in an atmosphere of overwhelming despair. In such a place, suicide is an ever-present temptation. A nameless father and son (Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee) journey southward to try and stave off the increasing cold of what appears to be a nuclear winter.
It is the unfailing fidelity of the father-son relationship that drives this film. Acts of protection and sacrifice breathe a draught of warmth into the frigid air. Simple moments of human kindness, because of their scarcity, loom large. Reading a bedtime story, or discovering and drinking an untainted can of coke becomes moments of grace in such a hellish existence.
You might well ask, what's the value in exposing yourself to such scenes of deprivation? After all, a post-apocalyptic feel-good story is an oxymoron. I believe there is still value in a cautionary tale that isn't preachy in tone, and that reminds us of our own self-destructive tendencies. There's also something to be said for rediscovering the value of human relationships in any context and the capacity to glean hope even amid the worst circumstances. The Road can lead you to some of these places, but I'd put The Book of Eli back on the shelf.
Two other titles in this genre that I would recommend are WALL-E (2008) and Children of Men (2006).
The Book of Eli and The Road are both rated 14A in Canada for violence and disturbing scenes.
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