In the world of lawless civilisation people fight for survival killing each other. The lack of any moral rules, make people not only to kill for water or a lighter but it becomes part of their amusement.
The film is a story of humans’ strength and power of belief in higher purpose, “a post-apocalyptic tale, in which alone man fights his way across America in order to protect a sacred book that holds the secrets to saving humankind.” (1) Bible is genuinely seen as a tool of good, however if it got into hands of evil it could become a tool of manipulation. Every religion has people interpreting their holly book’s rules in the right way, meaning, serving good faith (Existentialism) as well as leading people into self perfecting (overcoming themselves, Nietzsche). On the other hand, it misinterpreted it can become a tool of evil (bad faith, in Existentialism).
The film is about the power of Bible, power of words that it contains which can lead the masses. As we know, the meaning and importance of a Bible is relative. There has been numerous of its misinterpretations, e.g. killing people in the name of god (Koran), discrimination against women (Muslim), glorification of men (Muslim and Catholic), Crusades in XI, XII and XIII century religious military campaigns in the Middle East which had far-reaching political, economic, and social impacts (Christianity); turning church into institution (Catholic) or even discrimination against other nations like anti-Semitism (II WW Holocaust).The message passed through Jesus Christ in the Bible was pretty simple and created with good intentions, to bring the equality and mutual respect as well as challenging and overcoming weaknesses as well as having faith in higher purpose in human’s life. His words were powerful and influential as the aim of his teachings was to make an impact and be remembered. Doing good, loving, caring and having unselfish intentions as well as respect to all that surrounds us, humans, animals, nature and even that what we are most likely to be sharing the space with of we are not aware.
Desire of power over other human being was no Jesus Christ’s message. Humanity, love and truth were the main ideas that he wanted to embrace. It was not about him, personally, nor was it about making men pore important than women. It was the message that he brought among people, the box that the message was brought was meant to be meaningless. “From a very large number of experiments, two drives emerged as dominant: the desire for power and the emotion of fear. “ (1) When Nietzsche came to understand that fear as the feeling as “the absence of power” (1), he was left with a “single motivating principle for all human actions: the will to power.” (1)Majority of misinterpretation of Bible comes out from putting to much attention to the box when it was only its content that should have been remembered and contemplated. The ability to see only this content is not mastered enough these days because people created their own boxes-religions which are mostly convenient to their type of culture, habits, traditions and type of state or even climate they live in. The religions created, became powerful and manipulative, it is easy not to get through that layer and forget about the main idea the content. The strength and evaluation of the boxes have been influencing the content.
Believing in something strongly gives power to go through life obstacles to reach our goals and achieve what we have set ourselves to achieve. “He who is able to obey the rules he put on himself, believing that they are the right ones can become the man who is master of himself.”<>em>(2) It is not easy and requires lots of power, therefore, who achieves it, “has experienced the greatest increase in power (…)”. (1) After the war and the "Big Flash", Eli (Denzel) was guided by a higher power to a hidden book and given the task of protecting the book and taking it to its final destination.Faith and determination gives an immense power, unfortunately it could be used in either purpose, good or bad. A tool can not only create a beautiful piece of art but it could be used to kill, used to stab someone right into heart and finish someone’s existence in seconds.
1)The book of Eli (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1037705/)
2)Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The University of Winchester Journalism Course
History and Context of Journalism, part IV
