Let’s start this out by saying that I love Darren
Aronofsky’s work, ever since I first saw REQUIEM FOR A DREAM way back in the
day. He’s got a great sense of story, but even more so, he’s got a great eye
for aesthetics, and that’s what primarily drives his films, in particular THE
FOUNTAIN.
When I first heard about NOAH, I felt kind of turned off.
First of all, it’s a silly Bible story. I love Bible stories, generally
speaking. They’re fun. They’re gory. They’re sexy. But the story of Noah’s ark
is pretty silly and uninteresting. To make matters worse, it looked like they
were going for a gritty retelling, more GLADIATOR than Bible story. Fittingly,
they got Russell Crowe to star in it as the title character. Again, I love
Crowe’s work, ever since I saw him in THE QUICK AND THE DEAD. He’s better than
people give him credit for. But as Noah? It sounded like they wanted to take a
silly Bible story and turn it into an action flick.
But then I heard that Aronofsky was going to be at the helm.
I have a lot of faith in his work, and I knew he wouldn’t disappoint.
Sure enough, he didn’t. I loved the shit out of NOAH. As
much as I love Bible stories, they’re terribly written. This is probably due to
the limitations of writing back then. Moses, who is traditionally considered as
the author of the Torah, which is where Noah’s story appears in the Bible, had
a lot to go over and probably didn’t have a lot of material to write with. As a
result, he probably had to keep things short, especially since the laws are
more important than the stories. So, in essence, I believe we need fleshed out
versions of Bible stories written by experienced authors. NOAH is a great step
in this direction. However, Aronofsky managed to piss a lot of people off with
this movie. Why?
Let’s take a look at what’s in the Bible. Noah, who is the
son of Lamech, who in turn is the son of Methuselah, is a 600-year-old man with
a wife and three sons, Shem, Ham and Lapheth. In those days, the Nephilim still
walked the earth, and they had a habit of fucking human women, who would then
give birth to great men. God became sick with the wickedness of man’s ways, so
He decided to kill everything. It should be noted that there is nothing in the
Bible about Him deciding to start all over again at this point.
Everyone on the planet was evil, but Noah stuck out as being
a good guy, so God decided to spare him and his family. In that moment, He also
decided to start over by having Noah build an ark that would contain two of
every animal so they can repopulate the world. As a reward for this, God gives
Noah and his family (which includes the wives of his sons, as well; so the
grand total of people on board is eight) permission to get on the ark and
survive with the rest of the animals. Keep in mind, the Bible is very clear on
this point: God directly speaks to Noah.
Noah builds this ark to God’s exact specifications (and they
are VERY specific) just before the rain begins. Everyone gets on board, and it
rains for 40 days and 40 nights. Everything not on board the ark dies. Noah
then starts looking for dry land by sending birds out to find it. A dove brings
back an olive branch on the third try, and before long, in a very
WATERWORLD-type moment, Noah finds dry land. Everyone gets out of the ark. Noah
builds an altar to the Lord and starts making sacrifices with clean animals
(so, uh, not all the beasts got to renew their species). God loves the smell of
these burnt offerings, so He promises Noah that He will never again sentence
everyone to death. He chooses a rainbow as the symbol of His covenant with
humanity.
Noah becomes a farmer, which is not very important to the
story. He also becomes a vintner, which is waaaaaay more important to the
story. Noah, it turns out, loved the grape so much that he became the first
winemaker by building a vineyard. He was one of the first great drunks in
history, and when he drank, he liked to party naked. One day, Ham discovers his
father naked and passed out. He’s kind of disappointed in the old man, and he
asks his brothers to cover Noah up. When Noah wakes up, he’s furious to find
that someone was offended by his nudity enough to cover it up. In one of the
biggest overreactions in Biblical history, Noah condemns Ham—the guy who thought
to cover up his father’s dick, not the two sons who actually covered it up—and
his descendants to a lifetime of slavery. This is the Bible passage that
everyone points to when they’re defending slavery in America before the Civil War. It’s
generally thought that Ham was black, and that his descendants were Africans.
(One of his sons was Egypt,
and Egypt is in Africa, so . . .)
Anyway, Noah lives to be 950 years old, and then he dies.
See what I mean? It’s a silly story. It makes very little
sense, and there is no mystery to it. It’s very straightforward, even in its
goofiest moments. Aronofsky would have to go to great lengths in order to make
a great story out of this. And he does. Here’s how he does it.
Take Lamech and Methulselah. There is nothing in the Bible
about these guys except their names and their ages. This gives Aronofsky room
to play. Lamech, who is also played by Crowe, teaches a young Noah the
importance of farming, and he makes it very clear that animals are not to be
eaten. Noah and his family are vegetarians, even though in the Bible, God
clearly tells Noah that it’s OK to eat animals, that that’s what they’re there
for. Interesting development.
It should also be noted that Lamech blesses his son with a
snakeskin which presumably came from the devil in the Garden of Eden, since
Aronofsky shows such a snake shedding its skin several times in the story. The
skin is clearly magical, as it glows when it blesses Noah.
If you’re thrown off by such magic, hold on to your
britches. There’s more to come.
Remember that throwaway mention of the Nephilim? They don’t
figure much into the Bible story, but in the movie, they’re fallen angels. They
spoke up in favor of humanity to God, and they were punished by being kicked
out of heaven. They suffered on earth, their golden, fiery bodies becoming
lumbering stone monstrosities. Now that they suffer for their choice, they hate
human beings and want to kill them. Early in the film, they corner Noah and his
family (which consists of his wife and three sons—no wives for them—and the
injured little girl that they’ve taken in, who is not mentioned in the Bible at
all), but one of them hears Noah’s story and talks the others into helping him.
Here’s another point of difference: God doesn’t speak
directly to Noah. Instead, He sends visions. Noah, being just a dude, doesn’t
know what any of it means, so he’s on a quest to find his grandfather, who is
good at figuring out dreams. This is very important, because this is a story
about faith. The problem with faith is that nothing is clear. If it was clear,
there would be no reason to have faith. As a result, the message isn’t
interpreted properly, which we’ll get to later.
This leads Noah to planting a seed from Eden in the middle of a desolate wasteland,
thus growing a great forest, which he then culls to make an ark.
It should also be noted that Aronofsky replaces man’s
wickedness with something else: industry. In his version, mankind has razed
forests in favor of building giant factories, thus polluting the world and
killing most natural things. Hm. Sound familiar? Could it be that Aronofsky is
trying to make this silly Bible story, I don’t know, relevant to us?
With the help of the Nephilim, Noah builds his ark. The
pairs of animals, birds, lizards and so on come to him, but so does the king of
the realm and his warriors. This, by the way, is the guy who killed Noah’s
father and now possesses the snakeskin. These guys are savages. They keep
slaves, they eat human flesh, they take joy in slaughtering people. Real bad
guys.
Obviously, they don’t make it. There are some complications,
but that’s not what we’re here to talk about. The most important difference
between the Bible story and NOAH is Noah’s misinterpretation of God’s
intention. Noah doesn’t understand that God wants to repopulate the world with
humans, too. He’s of the opinion that God knows He fucked up with humans, and
He wants to rid the world of them. Let the animals survive. They did nothing.
They’re true innocents. He believes that it’s his duty to end the human race.
Wow. That’s some pretty heavy shit, right? No wonder a lot
of people are so upset. Noah knows that he and his wife will be buried by his
sons, and then his sons will be buried by his youngest, Lapheth. And he’ll be
the last human, and no one will bury him. One problem. Remember that little
girl? She’s in love with Shem, but due to her injury, she’s sterile. However,
God, through Methuselah, heals her. She’s pregnant on the ark. When Noah finds
out, he wants to kill her to ensure his interpretation of God’s plan is carried
out.
Any ordinary guy in that situation would take it as a sign
from God that he’s wrong. Not Noah. He decides that this is a test. After an
argument with the family, he comes to the conclusion that he’ll let her give
birth. If it’s a boy, he’ll do nothing. However, if it’s a girl, he will kill
the baby.
Heh. As it turns out, the woman gives birth to twins, and
they’re both girls. A lot of the climax of the story consists of Noah chasing
after her and her babies, intent on slitting the little babies’ throats.
Again, you can see why this film didn’t sit well with most
audiences. And you can probably see why this film sat very well with me. This
isn’t a Bible story; it’s a horror movie, and it’s a pretty brutal one at that.
It is essentially the struggle of one man to help the creator end His own
creation. There is a great scene late in the movie when a bunch of violent
scenes are juxtaposed together, matching with the first act of violence in
history, the moment when Cain murders Abel. This is what Noah is fighting to
destroy. It’s the ultimate scorched earth policy. That’s some scary stuff.
Most of the people who hate this movie do so because this is
not the Bible story they grew up with. They expected to see a big screen
version of it, and they were greatly disappointed. Ordinarily, I would tell
these people to go fuck themselves. You can’t get pissed off at a work of art
just because it didn’t match your very specific expectations. That’s stupid.
However, there are extenuating circumstances with this one, and I’ll get to
that in a moment.
I’ve called this Bible story silly many times, but I also
recognize that most people don’t agree with me. That’s fine. I understand why
that is: everyone who grew up with this story sees themselves as Noah. No one
is ever the bad guy of their own story, and while most people recognize their
own flaws, they always see themselves as good guys, usually better than most
other good guys.
It’s the same thing with zombie flicks. Everyone who
fantasizes about the zombie apocalypse assumes that they’re going to survive
it. Everyone who identifies with Noah assumes that God would choose them to
survive while the rest of humanity ends.
The Noah in NOAH is impossible to identify with. No one
wants to see themselves as a guy who wants to stab babies to death. But at the
same time, these are the same people who completely miss the point of this
massive character flaw.
You all know that I’m atheist. I’m not going to rule out the
impossibility of God, since I don’t know everything and all of the evidence
isn’t in, but I’m pretty sure, at 99.99999999999%, that God doesn’t exist,
which is sure enough to live my life as if He doesn’t. That puts me in the
minority.
The argument could be made that God can never give us actual
proof of His existence because that would negate the need for faith. I think
that’s bullshit, but that’s how a lot of the world looks at it. Everyone else
is OK with a creator who plays mind games like a paranoid girlfriend, and
that’s fine with me, just so long as no one gets hurt over it. But since 100%
of religion depends on faith, that means that God (and that’s a catch-all for
whatever deity you wish, not just the Christian one) has to speak through
religious documents. This leaves a lot open to interpretation.
Taking the end of Noah’s story in the Bible as an example,
people thought this was God giving white people permission to enslave Africans.
There are other passages which show why homosexuality is a sin. There are even
passages which people used to sentence people to death for witchcraft. Every
night, preachers and talking heads use their beliefs to justify all sorts of
crazy bullshit.
None of these people EVER wonder if maybe, just MAYBE, their
interpretations of the word of God are wrong. You have to be very careful when
it comes to this kind of thing. Maybe, instead of wanting help with the end of
humanity, God wants your help starting over with people. So instead of jumping
the gun and running after your kid’s wife so you can knife your baby
granddaughters to death, you should reconsider your interpretations.
That’s the ugly truth that most people who hated this movie
can’t face. No one likes being wrong, but people are constantly wrong. Instead
of letting things escalate because you’re too afraid of being wrong, you should
stop acting like a madman and fix things.
I don’t fault these people entirely, though. Normally I
would, but these poor bastards were tricked into seeing this movie by Paramount, or whoever
promoted the movie for them. The commercials I saw for this movie were
drastically edited to hide a lot of the things I’ve talked about here. I’m
astounded by this scam, I really am.
For example, you know the moment in the trailer when Ray
Winstone and his warriors confront Noah, and they make a great deal over how
Noah’s alone and outnumbered? Noah says, “I’m not alone.” The unspoken
implication is that he’s got God on his side, which speaks to the people who
are familiar with the story. However, in the actual movie, Noah is not
referring to God; he’s referring to the Nephilim, who are hiding as piles of
rocks. When the battle begins, they fight for Noah, decimating the king’s men.
Remember the moment when Noah is underwater and surprised?
That implies that it is a vision of the coming flood, which viewers understand
right away. Edited out of that scene, however, are a bunch of dead bodies
floating around. Those expecting the feel-good story from the Bible probably
wouldn’t appreciate all of those corpses.
How about the beautiful moment when a warrior throws his
sword down and ignites a field with a wave of fire? Well, in the actual movie,
the army that was in the field, which also contained the giant Nephilim rock
monsters that Paramount is so desperate to hide from potential viewers, and
they are ALL EDITED OUT OF THE IMAGE.
There are more moments, but I think you get the idea. Paramount went to great
lengths to misrepresent this film in an attempt to get a lot of the people who
came out for THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST to come out for this movie. It’s a
lowdown, dirty trick, and that’s why I’m excusing all the people who hated this
movie for not being what they wanted it to be. I’m disgusted with the studio’s
desire to use people’s religious beliefs for purposes of greed.
I don’t think Aronofsky or any of the cast and crew are
responsible for this. This is definitely a studio stunt. I recommend the movie
wholeheartedly because it’s a wonderful story with great actors and a solid
message. But don’t believe the lies of the studio. This is not a Bible story.
This is a story. Period.