Some thoughts on Noah the film

Watched Noah today and felt like putting some thoughts down, mostly for my own sake. I'll try to avoid spoilers, but we better all know the story...

For the grand scenery shots the setting was Iceland, so it was amazegorgeous. The actors were above-par and I felt did very well. I think the scripting, too, was enough, though I imagine the writers could've done a lot more in the way of philosophical side comments or advice. I'm glad they held back though, frankly. In essence, I think this story was told from a very human perspective and expressed in a way such as to display the humanity in the story—the parts you and I can relate with. (Which didn't come as a surprise, I guess.)

God was called simply Creator and was credited with creation and as a kind of good-impulse-giver, I suppose. They acknowledged Him enough to paint Him as someone the whole earth knew about, but whom most had dismissed entirely, usually in such a way as to become vengeful toward Him, at least passive-aggressively. And the rest, i.e., Noah, looked to Him as someone who deserved respect and an attendance in time of need or decision. But there were no over-zealous pious priests with face paint, no hyper-critical God-fearers preaching and condemning, no more-righteous-than-thous—and I liked that because it seems righter than always being right. But the way the film portrays Noah and his family makes it seem like they were simply following orders and nothing else. There was no room for mercy of any kind. No one else offered salvation on the ark. (But is that even Biblical, as it were?) No righteous, no blessed, just some that were found innocent enough to not be destroyed in the deluge. And then there really wasn't much at all in the way of praise or gratitude or worship, just a kind of somber resignation to die later instead of now. And so I found myself wishing the Creator had come out more of a winner; though, again, now that I'm thinking about it did He really win anything in that tragedy? I guess not.

I read the non-spoiler first-half of a review by Orson Scott Card (a favorite author of mine...) and he talks a bit about what I'll call the fleshiness of Noah's character—how Noah (actually, I guess Card was talking about Russell Crowe really, but I think it applies to both) was fit for the heroic moment but also man (human) enough to really struggle with certain decisions he had to make and that the struggle was believable. I agreed as I watched the film. Noah (Crowe...) was someone worth following, but also someone available enough to disagree with. [possibly some spoilerish material following...] And what Aronofsky's Noah ends up being is a man who respects the Creator enough to try and verify a vague message about the world's destruction, then follow through on some more vague instructions on how to save "the innocent" (the film's phrase), and finally, accept that perhaps the Creator really did mean the destruction of all mankind—regardless of what that meant for his family. In the end, I feel like the way the film's story rolls is the decision (or maybe the understanding or realization from their point of view) by the writers/directors that humanity was preserved by humanity and that the Creator allowed it but never displayed an outright blessing on it. In other words, I feel like somehow the credit for our existence after the flood is given to a man, not his Creator. Which to me is unfortunate, but also not a deal breaker. I feel aware enough to appreciate the film and actually enjoy it, but also that that point is one I would like to remember for my sake. I believe the Creator deserves more respect than we, and I, give Him. For more than just letting us persist after the flood.

All in all it was a cool film and story. Obviously there is a lot more that could be discussed. A lot of theology that people apparently are fussing about (I'm not on Facebook, thank goodness), and I'm sure dozens of other tidbits that folks will nitpick. Which, yes, I believe for every individual can be quite literally a life or death tidbit as far as what you believe goes. But for me, the above was the main takeaway. It was neat to see an interpretation of the event, "event" being a pretty light word to use. We talked (okay, I listened to talking) about Noah and the flood at Glacier View Ranch over breakfast a couple days last fall, and that plus the movie just further the realization for me that it must've been an absolutely unbelievable event in the as-close-to-literally way possible (except that I guess qualifying its unbelievability as "absolutele" is... a problem, or whatever). I mean, so epic. And with so few words written about it in the Bible it's kind of nice to have someone do the visual imaginative work for me, although the focus was not on the actual flood itself (which was nice, probably) and so it could've been represented much more expansively had they chosen.

I feel this "review" of sorts has gotten clumpy. I just liked the movie, okay. And the story. There are so many questions about it still and if I ever know (see!?) how it went down it will be amazing, I guess. It's a hard act to swallow, that of an apparently loving Creator God completely destroying everything He had created and blessed. What was that like for Him? What was Noah like? I don't know, but now I know how Aronofsky imagines it could've been like (if he believed that sort of thing).

If anyone reads this, it'd be fun to hear your thoughts or read your own review, so... share.


PS: I guess humanity saving humanity makes sense to me coming from an athiest, especially if the flood event is accepted even if God is not. I just saw the tagline on imdb's page for Noah and it says "Rediscover the story of one man and the most remarkable event in our history." And so, if random person A is just looking back on history, sees the flood story and maybe accepts it because of the proofs there are around the world and in ancient people's histories, then portraying the story as it is done is simply portraying an ancient family's belief in a Creator of the world and then subsequent survival of a catastrophic flood (the most commonly accepted version of the story, I think). I suppose it's like basing the story on the Bible as a sort of really old history book, not as Holy Scriptures. Because really, I'd say you could pretty much take "Creator" out of the entire story portrayed in the film and it'd still be fine. Except for the Watchers maybe. Though they are credited as coming from heaven, not as being some concoction of man. Anyway, there's a lot of over-analyzing going on in my head and not enough words to accurately portray the thoughts happening, so I quit. All in all I wonder if I am putting too much credit to one man (Aronofsky). In other words, maybe I'm the secondary English teacher insisting there are dozens of meanings to some poem or short story depending on how each person looks at it, when really, if you just asked the author, he'd say he just wrote a curious story about a bird and stick, or whatever. Maybe Aronofsky just tried to put himself in the mind of a Christian or something and make a cool film out of a pretty epic story. Maybe it's really simple, I just don't know. (And maybe he talks about it in interviews!? Okay I quit.)