I sometimes wish life were a fairy tale… sometimes.

My daughter loves watching princess movies (I think she is currently watching Matilda for the 50th time), but I know that she will eventually ‘realize’ that life has rough edges. There’s a messiness to life and nothing is as predictable as it appears. In fact, many times life just stinks.

Dina Goldstein creatively photographed a series of ‘happily-ever-after’ princesses and placed them in real life circumstances. What I like about her project is that it visualizes the tension between reality and fairy tale. It’s a tension we live in everyday.

However, the danger is when you allow the so-called facts of hard materialism to swallow up your wonder. I don’t want my daughter to lose that sense of wonder and beauty that fairy tales teach us. There is a truth in fairy tales that remind us of what is real… nobody says it better than G.K Chesterton:

“If I were describing them (fairy tales) in detail I could note many noble and healthy principles that arise from them. There is the great lesson of ‘Beauty and the Beast’; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of the ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ which tells how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep. But I am not concerned with any of the separate statutes of elfland, but with the whole spirit of its law, which I learnt before I could speak, and shall retain when I cannot write. I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.”

– G.K. Chesteron, The Ethics of Elfland

Traveling across a barren wasteland in a post-apocalyptic America, Denzel Washington plays ‘Eli,’ a future prophet who has in his possession what is the last remaining copy of the Bible. He has been commissioned by God to travel West, taking the book to a location to be preserved for the new world. In his travels, he confronts a world of human chaos and cruelty; a desolate wilderness with no apparent laws or rules.

The movie resembles a Mad Max plus Clint Eastwood Western, with a little bit of martial arts thrown in. Plenty of violence to go around here so keep the kids home. Eli is not looking for trouble but eventually trouble finds him. The storyline is a bit weak and sometimes predictable, but it does keep you interested throughout and wondering how it will all end. The end is not disappointing, and The character development all around is good here.

Usually when I critique movies, I place them into two main categories. One is the overall story and plot: was the story original, thought provoking, and impact-ful? The second is the portrayal of the movie… was it creatively filmed and/or visually engaging? The movie lacks in the first category, and is exceptional in the second. The cinematography and filming is excellent, with a sepia desaturated color tone and well supported sound track, it was stunning to watch. I can’t say enough about the photography… there’s something about the ruins of a post-apocalyptic world that make for interesting scenic views. There’s a fight scene shot entirely with just the silo of the characters… very well done. I could go on and on about the creative filming.

In conclusion, if you like a good Cowboy western, great cinematography, and decent character development, you’ll like this movie. The preservation of the Bible will be interesting for Christians who are use to seeing movies that usually bash the Bible. Denzel does a good job here as usual, although the Solara character played by Mila Kunis is a bit weak. Overall, not a fantastic movie, but a good one.