2000 Talk About Movies
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Contents © 2000
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

End of Days

Directed by Peter Hyams. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gabriel Byrne, Rod Steiger. 1999, 121 minutes, Color, English. Available at Blockbuster and Hollywood video.

Matthew: The nice way to view this film is as an attempt to make the interior life completely external. There are so many explosions because it's trying to paint a grossly physical picture of the interior struggle with evil. Ernie: The devil is often essentially intellectual, but there's precious little of that here. He's a lustful pig, and his fallback is violence. Matthew: He's an exterior force of evil, and here, he takes flesh. He's going to achieve his dominion through a physical invasion, through sex. Instead of there being an abstract fruit of evil, he's going to make a child.

* * *

Ernie: I enjoyed that charity and faith are ultimately what defeat the devil. Jericho realizes that it's faith that's going to [win the battle], and when the devil possesses his body, he still has his personhood, and the goodness in him wars against the devil.

* * *

Matthew: The priests had an odd role. They were guardians of a certain knowledge of evil, but they didn't have particular power. It's not like there was a struggle; the devil just laid waste to them.

Ernie: These anointed men of God should have had some power of exorcism, not to destroy the devil, but to ward him off.