My personal movie review: Darren Aronofsky's NOAH

by Terry 49 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  kepler

  Terry,

  An interesting review which raises some interesting matters. Some of them though, I am not sure that I follow you on.

  For one, when you refer to two Biblical accounts of the flood, what is the second one? Is it in Genesis, another book of the Bible or something like Enoch?

  Watchers are not very well spelled out in the Bible. And they bring us to Enoch again.

  Are we to assume that things not explicitly said in the Bible are in other books such as Enoch? How you deal with that is one matter, but there is also the larger matter of how people reading the Bible should deal with this generally. If there is a Biblical canon, then what are we to make of books that did not make the cut, yet are called upon to make sense of the ones that did?

  When someone said, let's go see "Noah", I did go along, but it was not because it was atop of my "do list". It did strike me as a strange film, and I did not find much kinship with it. But I suppose, like a long list of plays, novels and movies inspired by brief classical outlines, there was much room for an author or playwright to allow examination of new ideas derived from the set piece.

  Still, I am reminded of a local anecdote, related to the people who step into that breech created by speculation about UFOs. If I recall, the guy was a MUFON member and had spoke a lot about what a UFO if it should land might contain. When the film "Close Encounters" came out, he was asked his view of that film. What did he make of it?

  "Well, actually, I don't think it was realistic..." Under the circumstances of conjecture, satisfaction could not be guaranteed.
• 

  Vidiot

  I took the kids yesterday; I enjoyed it, they didn't really.

  In retrospect, I get why. It has some stuff preteens shouldn't really have to think about; they were especially bothered by how desperate and unhinged the rest of humanity was portrayed (tearing animals to pieces for food while the poor things were still alive, or selling your family members for meat, for example). They had trouble grasping that that's probably how human society would disintegrate if we literally clear-cut the planet...

  That being said...

  Terry's right; if you're able, try not to let WT conditioning trigger a knee-jerk reaction against it. Hell, I found way more artistic liberties taken with Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments than I ever did with this.

  PS: Roland Emmerich probably got a chubby watching it...
• 

  Terry

  Question:For one, when you refer to two Biblical accounts of the flood, what is the second one? Is it in Genesis, another book of the Bible or something like Enoch?

  Genesis 7: 2 says: 2 "You shall take with you of every clean animal by sevens, a male and his female; and of the animals that are not clean two, a male and his female; 3 also of the birds of the sky, by sevens, male and female, to keep offspring alive on the face of all the earth.…
• 

  Vidiot

  In addition (despite the fact that I haven't viewed the Deluge account in Genesis as literal history for a long time, now), Aronofsky's movie felt more believeable than anything the WTS has come up with on the subject matter.

  Not that that's saying much, considering the quality and short duration of that little animated thing they did a few years back...

  As we left the theatre afterwards, I joked to my kids, "Betcha never look at rain the same way again, huh?"

  Despite the fact that they didn't really enjoy the movie, that managed to get a smile.
• 

  Terry

  POINT: Aronofsky's movie felt more believeable than anything the WTS has come up with on the subject matter

  I totally agree and, in fact, I said that to myself as I was watching the film.

  Further, I would compare this to a work of music of theme and variations.

  The Bible provides the theme and Aronofsky's film is a variation on that theme.
• 

  OnTheWayOut

  Every fairytale gets monkeyed with in the movies. Disney is the greatest at whitewashing and sanitizing dark tales to make kid-friendly cartoons, but movies of Snow White or Hansel and Gretel have come from other sources and some were not so sanitized. There is a current trend to make darker, closer to original, versions of fairytales, but also to extrapolate and make whole stories beyond what is written.

  Of course, when it's a Bible story that is monkeyed with, people have to complain.

  Even among non-believers, I think the problem is that the basic story is too well known. All they had to do was add words to the title: THE BOOK OF ENOCH: NOAH, then maybe 40 seconds of dialog or writing at the beginning of the movie to say "You think you know the story, but...."
• 

  Heaven

  Weekend box office stats are in... Captain America is #1 beating out Noah by a large margin.
• 

  tenyearsafter

  Hi Terry...thanks for your thoughtful review.

  I do see that Aronofsky's attempt was to show the conflicted feelings of Noah and his family amidst the evil of his time and his service to the Creator. I would disagree that this was good film making. I found the movie to be plodding, dark and unable to define itself. If it weren't so controversial as to its authenticity, the movie would have faded away at the box office based on its merits. Unfortunately, I couldn't wait for it to end...just plain boring. I agree with others that have stated it would have been better to follow the biblical version for story content...it would make for more interesting viewing.
• 

  Vidiot

  tenyearsafter - "...it would have been better to follow the biblical version for story content...it would make for more interesting viewing."

  A straight-up word-for-word adaptation? Seriously?

  Trust me, it would be pretty boring, and a lot shorter, not to mention leaving a ton of unanswered questions (why was the planet itself a lost cause? how could a family of 8 (or less) build a craft that size without help? how would Tubal-cain have reacted to news of Noah's activities? why did Noah get drunk? why did Ham accept the "curse" of exile?

  Give me biblical epics portraying the characters as flawed and fallible with some kind of explanation for the smaller details over the alternative any day...
• 

  RayPublisher

  Excellent review Terry. It was quite good, despite a few silly moments IMO. Russell Crowe will always be The Gladiator to me though.

  I went and re-read the book of Enoch and a lot of the movie drew from this forgotten and lost Bible book... Its more accurate than a lot of people realize.