Noah
**Spoiler Alert** You’ve been warned. 🙂
It’s not really that surprising that many Christians who have seen “Noah” have walked away appalled. This is not a white-washed take on the classic tale, in which Noah is told by God to build an ark, one that can hold two of each animal, and prepare for a flood that will wash away the evil of the world, so that the world can begin again. That is still the basic spine of the narrative told in the screenplay by Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel, but their additions to the story (which only covers four chapters in the Bible) bring up challenging questions that I’m not sure a lot of audiences are ready to answer.
All that being said, it shouldn’t really shock too many moviegoers that Aronofsky, who has wanted to film the Noah story since he was a child, has some tough questions for moviegoers. In each of his previous five films (“Pi,” “Requiem for a Dream,” “The Fountain,” “The Wrestler,” and “Black Swan”), he hasn’t told simple morality tales, much less in simple cinematic styles (though “The Wrestler” comes closest), but thrown down the gauntlet for viewers in looking at drug addiction (in the harrowing “Requiem”) or, his favorite theme, the obsession that drives humanity to great emotional and physical lengths that result in a battle for the soul of his characters, whether they’re a lone mathematician obsessed with patterns (“Pi”); a scientist whose search for immortality gets in the way of accepting his wife’s losing battle with cancer (“The Fountain”); or a ballerina who has seen what being “not quite perfect” can do to a career, and is determined to not just be perfect, but unforgettable (“Black Swan”). This Noah is cut from the same cloth as those characters, especially in the second half of the film, when it’s just he, his family, and the animals alone on the ark, and the rest of the world is drown in the cleansing waters brought forth by the Creator to wash away the evil from Earth, and start anew.
But the relatively “simple” act of building the ark, and populating it with two of every animal, is only the starting place for Aronofsky’s “Noah” on his moral quest. Why is Noah tasked with doing this by the Creator? In the film, it’s laid out plainly– while Noah and his family, the last, remaining descendents of Seth, have been humbly nurturing the land in the name of the Creator, the descendents of Seth’s brother, Cain, have been raping it, creating an industrialized world that has been overrun by evil since Cain slew his other brother, Abel. Of course, that sin was preceded by the original sin of Adam and Eve (the brothers’s parents) eating from the Tree of Knowledge, resulting in mankind being kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and left to fend for themselves. Noah (played by Russell Crowe) and his family– wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly); his sons, Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman), and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll); and Ila (Emma Watson), whom they found abandoned as a child, and has been raised both as a daughter, and as a mate for Shem, despite being barren –are humble servants, who have stayed away from the wickedness of the rest of mankind, and who have respect and reverence for the Earth; that is why the Creator has tasked this to Noah. That’s also why only Noah and his family can be on the ark with the animals (who are innocents in the eyes of the Creator), even though neither Ham nor Japheth have potential wives of their own. Ham, in particular, is unhappy about this; he is coming of age to be a man himself, but if he’s unable to have a wife of his own, how can he become a man? That question is a fundamental one the film explores in a lot of different ways (including as a reflection of Shem and Ila’s courtship, since, at the start, they would be unable to have children) from shortly before the flood to even the final moments of the movie. Ham is one of the most complicated characters in the film; although he is very much Noah’s son, he also has a lot of his great uncle Cain in him, and that leads to some tough choices needing to be made, which Lerman (so good in “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”) make us feel in every, agonizing moment.
Those dilemmas with Ham and Shem and Ila also set the stage for one of Aronofsky’s boldest questions tied into why only Noah and his family are left on the ark. The obvious answer would be to tend to the animals, of course, and so that they can send out one of the birds to search for land after the rain has ended. Another answer would, we think, so that mankind can start over, with humble and loving roots towards the Creator, but if Ila is barren, and neither Ham nor Japheth have wives of their own, how is man to begin again? Is man to begin again? That part was never shown to Noah in his visions from the Creator. Those visions included a ground soaked in blood; a flower blooming; a watery grave for humanity; the mountain Noah’s grandfather, Methuselah (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins), lives on; and the ark. The Creator’s silence on the matter leads Noah to think that humanity ends with his family. However, when a miracle occurs, and Ila is pregnant, it seems like a sign from the Creator than mankind, indeed, is to survive. Noah doesn’t see it that way, and promises Shem and Ila that if they have a daughter, death is the only recourse. Mankind had it’s chance, and though the rains end when Ila becomes pregnant, Noah doesn’t see the Creator smiling down on humanity with a second chance. This is, arguably, the most challenging aspect of “Noah,” as Aronofsky is confronting the question of how man can claim to know what God wants. Yes, He has confided in Noah about the flood, and asked him to build an ark so that the animals (“innocents,” in the Creator’s eyes) can thrive, but does He ever reveal all of His plan to man, even one as righteous as Noah? It’s that arrogance in thinking we know what God wants for humanity that has lead to bigotry, death, and conflict over the centuries, and what makes “Noah” such a gripping piece of filmmaking in the way it explores that question. Is it how it was in the Bible? No, but Aronofsky and Handel, who grew up in the Jewish faith, only to grow away from it later in life, understand that as filmmakers, and storytellers, there is great benefit of telling such a well-known story in an unorthodox way. Like Martin Scorsese did in his adaptation of Kazantzakis’s “The Last Temptation of Christ,” Aronofsky finds places within the established narrative to explore ideas that seem like natural questions– in Scorsese’s case, the notion of how being part man challenged Christ’s ability to be a divine messiah for change –but don’t really come up in the telling of the story.
That unorthodox telling of the tale leads to some choices that have given the faithful pause. One of the biggest points of contention is how Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone), the king of the lands on which Noah is building the ark, and the one who killed Noah’s father many years ago, actually finds himself on the ark after the flooding starts. Say what? To call it a deviation from the accepted Biblical story is putting it mildly, but it serves a thematic purpose. Not only is Tubal-cain a representation of the wickedness of man the Creator is wanting to wipe from the Earth with the flood, but he also represents a very specific worldview that goes back to the question of why the ark was built. Noah sees it as the Creator’s way of starting over, and by populating it with two of each animal, giving the Earth a second chance (and, as Noah will discover, giving humanity a second chance to care for it). However, Tubal-cain sees man as holding dominion over the Earth, and the animals as a resource to be used for the purpose of man’s survival. The film has come under fire as turning the story into an pro-environment, anti-global warming tract, but if you think about it, wasn’t the story that already? If we look at the story from Noah’s perspective, and how he sees the Creator’s plan, then absolutely it was before Aronofsky told it, but at the same time, there are many who have read the story, and come to Tubal-cain’s conclusion, which basically places man at the center of all life on Earth, rather than us just being a product of natural selection that have climbed up the evolutionary ladder over the millennia. How shrewd of Aronofsky to pose the question of man’s place on Earth, and how man came into being, near the heart of his adaptation of one of the most famous Biblical stories, to say nothing of how audacious it is of him to present the story of creation, as told by Noah to his family as they are on the ark (and seen in a brilliant time-lapse sequence), in a way that makes room for the Big Bang and evolution, and yet, doesn’t discount the Biblical creation story, with Adam and Eve in the garden, and the temptation from the snake. They are all part of the same journey to the point Noah and his family are at when they are on the ark, all part of the Creator’s plan. Ultimately, the film presents the story as the Bible does, as a cautionary tale against the arrogance of mankind, not only in how we treat the Earth, but how we treat each other, and try to interpret what God has planned for man. Aronofsky may not be a believer himself, but he respects the idea of God enough to take this story, and all the ideas it brings up, seriously.
My personal relationship with religion and spiritual matters has been very much on my mind recently. That’s especially the case when it comes to movies that tell religious stories, or focus of religious themes, as you might have noticed in a recent blog I posted. I’m very much in the “spiritual, but not religious” camp after all these years, and I definitely feel like God has enough of a sense of humor to forgive some of my mocking (or criticisms) of religion and, at times, the religious when it comes to some of their more absurd ideas on the world, but who knows? I could be wrong. This review has focused a lot on the narrative and themes it presents, and not so much on the movie itself, which I think is kind of inevitable when it comes to religious movies based on Biblical stories. It also shows the worth of such a film, because it gives me a lot to think about beyond whether the performances are good (and they are) or the effects work (they do– ILM does a great job here) or if the music is effective (it is, which is not surprising considering the long, fruitful collaboration Clint Mansell and Kronos Quartet have with Aronofsky). I won’t necessarily say a film like “Noah” challenges all of my ideas on religion, but that it makes me really think about it for two hours, and what it can offer at it’s best in terms of how we see the world, is a valuable gift for any moviegoer, whether you’re a believer or not. For that reason alone, Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah” is something everyone should experience for themselves.
