Here are 16 things that this evangelical Christian likes about the Noah movie...
I like the sense of creativity, the sense that anything
could happen, the sense of magic, the sense that…in this movie-world…it would
make perfect sense for the sun to stand still, staffs could turn into snakes,
people could be swallowed by whales, animals could come two-by-two into a boat…you
get my point. A magical movie-world where
God can do anything without breaking the movie-rules, seems like an excellent
accomplishment.
I like the image of sin.
And, I like it that sin seems bad. The Bible is foundationally built on
this idea that sin is bad and deserves punishment.
I like a strong patriarchal character when portraying a time
and culture of strong patriarchal characters.
I like the emphasis on justice. To me, this is the most amazing part of the
movie… How can you take us, as a
pluralistic-don’t-say-anything-is-sinful society…and, create a world where
there is no second-guessing that it is right for the world to be destroyed? If you read the Old Testament and all the
battles and total destruction of cities, man, women, children….this is an
important concept to consider. Even more
difficult…how can you take a person that God says was righteous and show that this
person, Noah, was also full of sin and would also deserve to be destroyed, but God
in his graciousness spared him and his family?
Darren Aronofsky does this by showing that sin can corrupt even our best
thoughts. Sin can corrupt our very acts
of following out God’s orders. And, very
impressively, Mr. Aronofsky takes the viewers on a psychological trip where they
go from seeing Noah as a great man to seeing Noah as someone that they could
hate because of his evilness…someone that could justly be destroyed. I think it’s a wonderfully explicit picture of the corruption of evil in our
hearts, our human depravity (speaking Calvinistic-ally). Noah tells his wife that sin is in her love
for her kids. Sin is in Noah’s love for
God. How do you walk the balance of
showing that Noah was righteous, but still sin-tainted? Noah, the movie, seems to accomplish this
task.
I like the foreshadowing at the beginning of the movie when the
bad guy, I think Tubal-Cain is his name, says several times, “I’ll be damned”.
I like the picture near the end of the movie when the
consequence of sin, pain in childbirth, is interspersed with two people
fighting for their lives, giving us an allegorical flashback to Cain and
Abel.
I like the way Noah thinking about killing his grandchildren
foreshadows Abraham killing Isaac.
I like the way Noah is the gateway for the survival of the
future of humanity…Christ-type?
I like the way the movie made me slow down and think about
what it would be like to see a humanity that is so bad that God would be
willing to wipe them off the face of the earth.
I think that, at some point, this would make you wonder if God should
continue with humanity at all.
I like the emphasis on humans destroying God’s
creation. God is introduced to us in the
Bible as a Creator. It makes sense to me
that part of humanity’s rebellion against him would include destroying his
creation.
I like the fact that Noah is sort-of an ultimate
fighter. If the world as violent as it
was in Noah’s day, he would likely need to have some sort-of defense skills to
stay alive.
I like it that I went back to the Bible and looked up the
Nephilim, which means “giants” and are described as “mighty men who were of
old, the men of renown”. …granted, the
word ‘transformer’ is not used.
I like it that when I went back to my Bible I saw a verse
that finds God saying to Noah, “The fear of you and the dread of you shall be
upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird…”…basically all of
creation. A) That fear/dread load is probably
a heavy load to bear, B) the movie gives a picture of a Noah to be feared, C) I
had never spent time thinking about this aspect until I saw the movie.
I like the way it showed the struggle of the godly and the
ungodly in God’s lack of responding to them in the fashion that they would
prefer. The bad, Cain-guy, wanted God to
speak to him in a certain way, but because God wouldn’t speak to him in this
way, he ignored the voice of God through Noah and he hated God. Even righteous Noah wanted God to speak to
him in a certain way, and struggled because God wouldn’t speak to him in the
way and in the timing that he preferred.
Today, people struggle with this same thing.
I like the way it showed a humanity that believed in God,
but still did their own thing. They (at
least Tubal-Cain) were not atheists.
I like a movie that examines important Biblical themes and
concepts…such as sin and justice. And,
personally, I feel quite okay forgiving a movie that pushes the outer
boundaries of what a narrative, Biblical story can be, when it gives such a
good picture of the Biblical themes and concepts. Because it obviously wasn’t attempting to
recreate a documentary style atmosphere, my brain was released to think about themes, psychology, theology, instead of noticing tiny little details that
he got wrong. If I were to have directed
the movie, my conscious/Bible-respect wouldn’t have allowed me to make the
choices that Darren Aronofsky made. But,
I still highly enjoyed the world that he created.
In my mind, I think Noah is a great movie. Thanks for making it, Darren Aronofsky.
“For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.” – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
