Saturday, February 13, 2010

The faith of Denzel

image I found this interesting interview with Denzel Washington conducted by Christianity Today.

Faith is everywhere in Washington's new post-apocalyptic film, The Book of Eli, which opens Friday and is being marketed with "B-ELI-EVE" and "D-ELI-VER US" billboards. In the movie, Washington plays a mysterious machete-wielding traveler named Eli, directed by God to protect the earth's last remaining copy of the Bible—that's right, the Bible—and to take it "out West" for safekeeping while villains seek to take it by force and use it as a "weapon" of control.

Washington's character in the film is intensely violent—severing the limbs of bad guys at every turn—but begins to soften when he meets an innocent girl (Mila Kunis) who reminds him that we can get so caught up in protecting God's Word that we sometimes forget to live by it.

For Washington, "living by it" is chiefly characterized by love and sacrifice. The ultimate message of Eli, he says, is "Do more for others than you would do for yourself." It's a message Washington was surrounded by as a boy.

"We prayed about everything, everyday," Washington told members of the religious media last week in Los Angeles. "And we always ended with 'Amen. God is love.' I thought 'God is love' was one word. It took me a long time to learn what that meant. I don't care what book you read or what you believe—if you don't have love, if you don't love your fellow man, then you don't have anything."

read more here

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I loved this movie, as well as "Man on Fire". I likes this one better though. I'd like to have them both,

I loved when he taught Mila to pray - his prayer was so simple, sincere and devoid of christianeze (which I deplore). I loved it when he said taht "before the flash, we threw away things that we kill each other over now, we forgot what was precious." And I loved when he sacrificed the book to save Mila and said "he was so busy prtecting the book that he forgot to do what it had taught him."

This movie was awesome.

Anonymous said...

Actually it was Candi who commented, Bob hasn't seen it yet!