The Book of Eli

Albert Hughes and his brother Allen made this 2010 film about Eli, walking west across a wrecked country, ready to kill for his book. Gary Whitta wrote it alone; Anthony Peckham rewrote it before shooting. Whitta says the blindness disclosed at the end is the design: if Eli cannot see, everything he did is impossible and only divine guidance explains it. Washington plays to it, turning toward what he hears or smells at moments that read as eye contact. The plan to hide what the book is was dropped: no trailer could be cut around it. It was shot on the RED One, chosen because the camera’s washed out response gave the look they wanted, against Gustave Doré’s Bible engravings and the Nagasaki Journey photographs. The house siege was designed as one shot: a hundred foot crane and two hundred feet of bungee cable carried the camera through two and a half minutes with no visible cut. New Mexico stood in for the wasteland; Denzel Washington trained for months with Dan Inosanto and Jeff Imada in Filipino stick and blade work. A good fit if you want the answer to how Eli never misses withheld until the last minutes, then applied backwards. Not for you if you want the faith question open; the screenwriter treats the ending as proof.