“The cast (of “Book of Eli”) had plenty to say about the very Western feel of “The Book of Eli.” You could argue that many postapocalyptic films echo with the themes and topics of Westerns — what is “The Road Warrior” if not “Shane” writ very, very large? — and “The Book of Eli” does work on that level.
In fact, it’s to such a degree that Gary Oldman can (and, when I prompted him, did) dig into the plot on a granular level and list Western plot point after Western plot point: “When I first read the script I thought that it was a postapocalyptic Western. We don’t have horses, but we have these armored trucks. But the story, the premise, is very like an old-fashioned Western. You have [my character], he’s sort of like a mayor, or a dark sheriff; there’s a town that he’s kind of got under his control, and the drifter comes through and he wants something and I want something he’s got and he’s not prepared to give it to me, and I lock him in the jail and he escapes and I get a posse together and go off. It’s classic Western stuff.”
Denzel Washington explained that the first screenplay he read was even more explicit in the parallels: “The original script was very much like a Western; [screenwriter Gary Whitta] even used words like ‘saloon’ … ‘barn’ … it definitely was much more Western-meets …” Here, Washington summed up five decades of the Western appropriation of Eastern action cinema with one phrase: “Grasshopper. [Eli's] a guy with a samurai sword, he walks into the saloon … we took some of that away, because it already has that feel anyway.”
Mila Kunis, meanwhile, shrugged off any question of similarities of classic Westerns with a moment of self-effacement: “Look who you’re talking to … I watched [Westerns] because my dad made me. … [But] I love ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly‘; it’s my favorite film of all time.”
Meanwhile, co-star Kunis, who plays Oldman’s daughter and Washington’s ally, was less concerned with the presence of Western-film moments than with the absence of Western civilization. I asked her to name a few favorite postapocalyptic films, and Kunis, interestingly, came at the question with a true outsider’s perspective: “I’m not the biggest fan of postapocalyptic films; I can’t even begin to name a single one that I ever watched more than once … except for … what was that movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger? What was that? ‘The Terminator.’ That’s the only one I can say I’ve seen more than once. ”
Washington, asked the same question, responded with a firm grasp on great movies and, perhaps, a slippery grip on the nature of the subgenre: “Was ‘Blade Runner‘ postapocalyptic? It had a lotta rain. I like that; I remember that. And I don’t know what ‘Brazil’ was … I just remember a lot of ducts. What was that? What was ‘Brazil’?”
I did ask Kunis if filming “The Book of Eli” made her stock up on bottled water in the basement or otherwise raise her own apocalypse awareness level: “A little bit … but I was that person anyway, for Y2K. I was that person, from 1999 to 2000, who was, ‘We gotta stockpile water in this house, Mom!’ And she was like, ‘Child, you crazy!’”
Really? I asked Kunis: Your mom talks like one of the waitresses from “Alice”? “‘Alice’! That’s your reference? I love ‘Alice’! I wish my mom spoke like that. In my head she does; really, she has a thick Russian accent.”
And, closing out the crazy-talk, I also asked Kunis if the ending of the film left a thread by which her character could be the basis of a second volume of “The Book of Eli.” Kunis batted sequel talk aside with a wave of her hand: “No, no, no. There is no second installment of this. Come on. You can’t make ‘The Book of Eli 2.’ It would be a very silly movie.”
“The Book of Eli” opens this weekend; all things considered, look for “The Book of Eli 2: Read Harder” in 2013.”
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