Whilst perusing my Facebook feed not many days ago I discovered a post entitled “What’s wrong with Christian filmmaking,” which described the general impotence of Christian film-makers and artists in the 21st century. Now this post was largely consumed by a comparison of two recent films: God’s Not Dead (Harold Cronk, 2014) and Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014), and I found it echoed many of my sentiments concerning the lack of courage, integrity and respect for the audience I find in many Christian films, creative fiction and pieces of visual art these days. I give fair warning ahead of what follows in that I have not seen God’s Not Dead, only read quite a few reviews as to its pedantic, flat treatment of many difficult issues, HOWEVER, I did go see Noah and I have observed more than one comment by Christians I love and respect that greatly discouraged me and my love for art and literature.
Before I go on to discuss Noah itself, I think a few comments about the roles of art, literature and religion are quite warranted. Firstly, when I say “art” I mean all the things that huge word encompasses including film, music, visual art, novels, blogs and any other kind of creation made by a human being that does something other than just convey information. Of course there are ways in which the conveyance of information can be called “art” too, but this isn’t a discussion on the nature of Art with a capital A, it’s a discussion on what kind of partnership Christianity needs to have with this enigmatic concept. Moving on, in the history of film, there have been countless scores of books, legends, myths and historical accounts adapted into movies, and for a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeery long time the gold standard for all of these was: “Is it as good as the book?” Which really means: “Is it the same as the book?” To which the answer was always a resounding no! no! NO! Why could this have been so? Why, because books and movies ARE NOT THE SAME! It always baffled me why viewers were always so concerned with “faithfulness” in film representation, but were hardly concerned that the images on the screen didn’t match their own ideas of what the characters looked like or how they spoke or what they wore. It seemed that whatever official film version was produced was required to be a perfect translation of words into image, and that whenever this failed to be accomplished, the film was pronounced a lesser entity. If we think a bit about this statement, we will quickly realize the deep, abiding flaw in this logic: every book must be interpreted by its reader and therefore all interpretations will vary, including that of the author himself say, when he first writes in comparison to when he reads his work many years later. So, with that in mind, we realize that films are always interpretations of their original source stories, BUT that’s not all. If a film is an interpretation, does that interpretation belong to the original work? Is it the mirror image of that story? Again, the answer is no. A film based on a novel or a historical account is a separate entity which draws inspiration from the written word and then interprets it in a way proper for the medium and for the person directing. A film and a novel should never been consumed side by side as if they were mutant twins of each other, because they aren’t and to do that is to do great violence to both the novel and the film. It’s a very romantic and juvenile thing to expect a two hour film to produce all the sensations and pictures of a 400 page novel, just as it is baffling to expect such a novel to give exactly the same emotions and images of the aforementioned film, which is colored by its actors, designers, cinematography, etc. Even just practically speaking if you think about how long it takes the average person to read a novel, versus how long a feature-length film is, you just can’t compare them.
With that being said, let us move to the topic at hand. Darren Aronofsky, the fine director of this fine film, said recently that Noah is the most unbiblical biblical movie out there on the market. My opinion is that this is partly true and partly false, and that Aronofsky is a lover of controversy. Are there renderings of this ancient story available in film version that are more “faithful” to the text? Maybe, in the sense that they follow certain events in the text more scrupulously, but what about culturally? What about psychologically? What about spiritually? If I wanted to have the very same version as was written down by Moses all those years ago, I would have read Genesis. But we’re not about reading tonight. We’re about interpreting this vicious, brutal story of justice, mercy and redemption in the medium of film. If you take the time to sit down and read the account in Genesis, as is one of the great beauties of many of the historical accounts, you’ll notice that there are many questions left unanswered by the text. How did Noah and his seven family members actually assemble such a huge boat? How did they get all the animals to fit inside? Did water really cover the entire globe, or just the known world of Noah’s valley? To what extent had the antediluvian civilization progressed? What exactly were its sins so grievous that God himself, who would one day die for all mankind on a cross in Jerusalem, would not spare them? I operate under the assumption that this story is a historical account passed through many generations of Israelites as well as other nearby cultures (if you want to take that kind of thing up with me I can write about that too, but that’s not my goal here) and then rendered faithfully in ancient Hebrew by Moses (I’m also not here to discuss the difference between oral and written histories). With that in mind, we have to accept something called “creative license” in the process of interpreting and rendering this story in any coherent way. There are just some facts we do not know, and in using this text as a historical document, we must operate with this understanding that is common to many kinds of historical study, but when it comes to art, we use this story to perform a different role. In the next few paragraphs I’ll address a few parts of the film I found to be interesting and/or vaguely sacrilegious in a useful way.
Firstly, you can’t discuss a film without discussing imagery, and man was this one a whopper. The first thing that jumped out at me was wow, everyone is white! The ancient world had hardly a white person in sight! Didn’t it? Of course, we hardly know when this story is supposed to have taken place unless you’re following a Young Earth Creation model, in which case it would have occurred like 7,000 years ago or something. What did man look like back then? Did God create Adam and Eve with a tan? Was their world so sunny it made sense for them to have very dark skin? Who knows! Nobody knows! And that is hardly the point. The point is who is relating to this film and in what cultural context is it coming to pass? I personally think the goal was to create a neutral, almost fantastic-mythic culture and purposefully avoid the Ancient Near East clothing styles and skin color because it directly evokes biblical media from the past that carries its own baggage. Additionally, you’ll notice that although Noah and his family were deeply connected to the God of the future Jews and Christians, his story came to pass long before either of those religions existed along with the cultural conventions to which they were inevitably married. Again, as a devout Christian I believe that we are called to rise about our culture to the standard required of us, but our worship style, dress, language, so many things about us are coded unconsciously by that very culture we seek to sometimes abandon. So which culture is right to cast this story in, when none close really existed? Are images of Noah the Jewish patriarch really historically accurate? Probably not. In that case, is it wrong to represent him in a different way, a way that helps us view him from a different angle? Double probably not.
Next up: The Watchers. Now this one is a rather unmentioned concept in the biblical version of Noah, not that fallen angels weren’t supposedly wandering the earth at that time, just that nowhere does it mention them helping out or making nice with antediluvian man, especially Noah. What this bit did convey that I absolutely loved was the terrible longing and separation from God that would have been present in all living creatures at this time. How would it feel to be handicapped in a strange land and unable to return to your home, even if you wanted it more than anything in the world? How would it feel to not even be able to talk to your family? What kind of alienation would you feel? I think you would feel a little like those poor, unfortunate rock-Ents. The use of creative license here was also splendid, as it made lots of sense for Noah to have some help puttin’ old arky together.
Now that we’ve gotten the topic of alienation out into the air, the next thing would be the silence of God in this film and Noah’s crew. Now both the bad guy, descendent of Cain, and Noah himself, spend a bit of time screaming at God trying to get some kind of answer. You’ll see a great contrast in the way Noah accepts what he thinks Gods says is right, where as Cain guy just kind of turns himself into his own god. In the biblical version Noah of course receives a very clear directive from God to build an ark of a particular size and take his whole family (including three married sons and wives) onto it. God is quite vocal in the written version, whether you interpret it as a vision or as Him directly speaking. What purpose does the silence of God provide in the film? What does it mean to a modern audience? Is God not present, even if He is silent? I think this story is so heavily loaded with Judeo-Christian theology that even without mentioning God, it’s impossible for His presence not to dominate the landscape. In fact, there are several moments when Noah and the other characters’ lack of patience causes them strife when God had actually planned it all out for them: Ham’s adventure into barbarian land to get a wife, Noah’s attempt to murder his daugther-in-law’s children who were provided as wives to his sons, Herminone’s moping about being barren…God’s presence is overwhelmingly there in this film and the bad guys are very clearly being punished for their hubris and failure to be stewards of the things God has given them. Additionally Noah’s psychological struggle to enact justice and his inability to doom his family in spite of the fact that they too were guilty of bad behavior basically sums up the story of salvation in one beautiful symbol. Neither God nor Noah was willing that all of mankind should perish, even though we deserved it. The story does the talking in this film and God lets it unfold like one of those magic raindrop flowers. This set up seamlessly pairs up the very modern pain of separation and silence from God with the idea of His plan and His provision which is so easy to forget.
I could continue on for a while about this film and everything I loved and hated about it. Is it a family feature? No way man. This is a film for those who are interested in learning how God works and how we can grapple with this ageless story as human beings, and true to Aronofsky form it is not for the faint of heart, but then again, the ugly side of man is pretty ugly. Is it a piece of Christian filmmaking? You bet your pew-ensconced butt it is. Are we called to actually have some respect for our audience’s intelligence and actually think a bit about what we are producing instead of hiding it in a veil of Christianese? Again, your butt can be quite safely bet on this one. Does God have respect for our imagination and for our intelligence as his followers too? I think sometimes He’s a bit disappointed, but hoping for another C.S.Lewis any minute now. A film like Noah blows a lot of more traditional Christian film-making out of the water because it isn’t afraid to push boundaries and very lovingly take apart convention. I think God wants us all to approach him the right way, which I think is definitely a thing, but we need to take a step back sometimes and wonder why it is that we are so attached to this fearful way of approaching media. I don’t think depicting sin and struggle is a sin as well. I think it’s another way to approach the throne of God.
A Sentimental Journey 