Theo looked at Julian. He wanted to ask: “Is this the man you and your God between you have chosen to repopulate the world?” He said coldly: “For God’s sake, don’t start threatening. You can reduce everything, even this, to the level of a cheap feature film. If I come with you it will be because I choose to.”
My favourite thing about the self-consciousness of this is that the film actually met the material where it was at -- in good faith, one might say -- and transcended it in a lot of ways. This doesn't happen very often.
But you can read through the weightier, headier, most thoughtful passages of this book and see where the inspiration came to the filmmaker. The love and earnestness at the heart of this world-hardened genre piece are very much present in both texts.
