Saturday, April 5, 2014

16 Things I like about Darren Aronofsky's Noah movie



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