Russell Crowe stars in "Noah", the just released film from writer and director Darren Aronofsky (CNS photo)
Neil deGrasse Tyson—the prominent astrophysicist and science popularizer whose reboot of Cosmos
is currently airing on Fox and the National Geographic Channel—was
asked a few years ago “which books should be read by every single
intelligent person on the planet.” Tyson’s #1 pick, the Bible, would
have been unremarkable if not for his flippant parenthetical rationale
for this choice: “to learn that it’s easier to be told by others what to
think and believe than it is to think for yourself.”
Reading
those words (tossed off, to be fair, in a comment on Reddit), I wonder
how many nonreligious scholars of the humanities have winced at Tyson’s
parched, polemical assessment of the value of reading the Bible. As
basic cultural familiarity with the most elementary aspects of the
Bible’s contents dwindles in our post-Christian culture, a complacent
dismissiveness toward the Bible as an antiquated compilation of
benighted Bronze Age myth and superstition unworthy of any educated
person’s time (except perhaps to understand the opposition) becomes ever
more viable.
Taking Scripture Seriously
Some might argue that Darren Aronofsky’s Noah,
with its wild elaborations upon the text of Genesis, can only further
contribute to biblical illiteracy. Yet for all its dramatic and
cinematic liberties, Noah is profoundly engaged with its source material. Noah takes Genesis seriously as a text worth reading carefully and thinking about deeply in its own right.
Raised
culturally Jewish, Aronofsky is an atheist, but has long been
fascinated by the story of Noah (since writing a contest-winning poem
about the dove and the ark in 7th grade, and reading it aloud at the
United Nations). Development on the film dates back over 15 years. (With
co-writer Ari Handel, Aronofsky has also scripted a graphic novel about
Noah based on an early screenplay for the film.)
Noah is
the work of a filmmaker deeply familiar with the story of the great
flood, not only in its canonical form in Genesis, but also in other
ancient Jewish texts, from the books of Enoch and Jubilees to rabbinic
commentaries and midrashic retellings. In some ways it reflects the
influence of our secular age; in other ways it offers a bracing challenge to
it. It is a divisive film and a divided film, one that seems almost to
be arguing with itself, and about which those arguing on all sides may
at turns have a point.
“Let me tell you a story,” Russell Crowe’s
Noah says to his family in a moment of great crisis and emotion. “The
first story my father told me, and the first story I told each of you.”
What he recounts are the events of Genesis 1, the creation of the world,
and Aronofsky relates them both verbally and visually in a way that
bespeaks a confidence in the power of this story to speak to us today: a
story still worth telling and retelling.
I don’t know whether
Aronofsky (raised with what he describes as a “very, very basic Jewish
education”) learned that or other Bible stories as Noah did, from his
own father. But watching the film’s visionary recounting of the six days
of creation, juxtaposed with time-lapse images of the origins of the
cosmos, from the Big Bang to the arrival of man, I remembered that Aronofsky’s
father had been a science teacher at a yeshiva school. Here are ancient
and modern cosmologies standing side by side, not contrary but
complementary.
Uncertainty and Assurances
Our
crisis is not unlike that of Noah and his family in the film, religious
and cultural castaways in an increasingly secularized culture, seeking
to lead a righteous life and raise righteous children in spite of the
world around us. Surrounded by the rapacious civilization founded by
Cain, Noah and his family live as nomads apart—antediluvian preppers
living off the grid, as it were. At one point Noah notes with concern
that his son Ham (Logan Lerman) seems “a little too curious” about a
group of lawless men they encountered. “He had to see it sometime,”
Noah’s wife Naamah (Jennifer Connelly) points out. It’s a strikingly
contemporary exchange.
Also like many apocalyptically minded
people in our age (and in many previous ages), Noah’s initial impression
regarding the judgment to come is that he has lived to see the End
Times, the Final Days. Noah’s grandfather Methuselah also seems to have
some premonition of the judgment to come, remarking, “Before he walked
on, my father Enoch told me if men continued in their evil ways the
world would be annihilated.”
Yet Methuselah assumes that the
coming judgment is that foreseen by his father Enoch (whom scripture
says “walked with God” until God “took” him, apparently without dying):
the “fires of destruction.” When Noah contradicts him, Methuselah is
surprised: “Water? Huh. My father said there would be fire.” That’s when
Noah begins to suspect that God has more to show him. Even after Noah
grasps God’s plan for the ark, his idea of the postdiluvian future
continues to shift.
This theme of uncertainty exists in tension
with Methuselah’s assurance to Noah that God’s will is knowable: “You
must trust that he speaks to you in a way you can understand.” Perhaps
it’s enough that at every stage Noah has the light he needs to do what
is necessary at that moment, even if he doesn’t always fully grasp why
or for what ultimate end.
This is a case in point of what seems to
me one of the film’s most notable achievements: its sense of a story
unfolding in the present tense, with characters who don’t know how it
all ends any more than we know how our stories end.
Struggling to
understand and interpret the signs of his times in light of his faith
and what he understands as God’s will, Noah is not unlike the Twelve in
the Gospels, with their faulty conception of what Jesus was getting at
regarding the kingdom of God and the Messiah’s mission. Or Francis of
Assisi, setting about literally rebuilding the church at San Damiano
when Jesus really wanted him to help rebuild the universal Church.
The
exact import of events we are living through, whether in light of
divine revelation or any other framework of meaning, is often unclear.
Ultimate realities seem to loom large and close, peering from behind or
even through proximate events. The collapse of any way of life is always
a glimpse of the eschaton; the birth of anything new always evokes the
inception of new world, the arrival of heavenly Jerusalem.
In
retrospect, the outcome both illuminates the event and also obscures the
reality of living through it. For the Jerusalem church, A.D. 70 was the end of the world and the coming of the Lord in judgment. Cyrus of Persia was messiah for God's people in his day.
C.S.
Lewis talked about how older commentators sometimes appeared to assume
that the theological worldview of Jesus' Jewish predecessors was
essentially no different from later Christian theology, the main
difference being that what for them was prophecy for us is accomplished
fact. In reality, what we see as the fulfillment of prophecy also
involves revolutions in perspective and reinterpretation of beliefs.
Pondering the Ways of God
Noah
devotes considerable attention to the depiction of an antediluvian
world close to creation, not just in its fanciful or mythic trappings
(giant rock monsters, magical glowing rocks, etc.), but also in its
primordial religious sense.
Noah’s God (I’ve noted a number of
times lately) has not called Abraham, revealed his name to Moses, or
brought his people out of Egypt. There is no covenant sign of
circumcision, no Decalogue, no Levitical priesthood, no Davidic
monarchy, no Jerusalem temple.
Some casual readers of the Bible
suppose that in those early chapters of Genesis God was a regular
palpable presence, intervening directly in human affairs on a regular
basis. Some viewers may be startled to hear the villainous Tubal-cain,
king of the wicked civilization of Cain, sneer, “The Creator doesn’t
care about what happens in the world. No one’s heard from him since he
marked Cain.” This is true; at least, the Bible makes no mention of God
speaking to anyone for about a millennium and a half, from the dawn of
the world to the revelation to Noah.
Tubal-cain and his followers acknowledge God’s existence, yet their worldview is nearly as secular as
that of Tyson or any modern nonbeliever. “We are orphaned children in
this world,” Tubal-cain spits, “cursed to struggle by the sweat of our
brow. Damned if I don’t do whatever it takes to do just that.” He is
almost Nietzschean in his anti-religious amorality and
self-determination.
Noah, by contrast, is determined to fulfill
the Creator’s will at all costs—and here some may feel the story
threatens to vindicate the suspicions and accusations of some
unbelievers regarding the dangers of religion. For a key part of the
story, Noah believes God wants him to do something appalling—is a motif
absent in the story of the flood, although it resonates with other
stories in scripture. In fact, for part of the film, Noah becomes the
antagonist.
At this point, critics hostile to religion will see
Noah as a dangerous zealot, a figure embodying the power of faith to
elicit horrifying behavior. Of course, the film also shows impious men
doing similarly horrifying things with impunity, but the fact that men
can do horrible things without the benefit of religious motives never seems to carry much weight with such critics.
Noah
dares to advance the thesis that it would not be wicked or unjust, but
simple justice, for God to wipe out all mankind from the Earth. There is
a thematic arc in the film from justice to mercy, from extermination of
all life to the preservation of some life. In Genesis this step from
divine justice to divine mercy takes place between verse 7 and verse 8
of chapter 6; in the movie it takes Noah a significant part of the film
to take the same step.
Man and the Environment
In
part, the film makes its argument for the justice of ending the human
race by adding an environmental theme absent in the biblical story: men,
called to be stewards of creation, have instead despoiled it, reducing
it to a blasted waste. While this environmental theme doesn’t negate or
downplay themes of violence, brutality, defiance of God and other marks
of wickedness, it does suggest an alternative version of the world after
the flood: perhaps God wants a new world with animals, but without
humans.
This suggestion is unfortunately compounded by an emphasis
on human responsibility for creation over human dignity. When Noah or
his father Lamech say the Creator made us “in his image,” they always
immediately tie it to responsibility for creation. Only Tubal-cain
speaks of the “greatness” of man, or uses the biblical language of
“subduing” and having “dominion,” which he interprets to mean
exploitation without responsibility.
Lacking a clear vision in Genesis of man as the pinnacle of God’s creative work, Noah
partially succumbs to a certain default naturalism widespread in
contemporary culture. On this view, human beings are part of the
natural world, not something uniquely valued by God for our own sake.
It’s
also fair to say that the film is more sharply aware of the original
sin and its consequences than of human dignity. Or perhaps it’s simply
Noah himself who is more sharply aware of original sin. Eventually he
becomes uncomfortably aware that wiping out mankind and starting again
won’t ultimately solve anything. “Wickedness is not just in them, it’s
in all of us,” he tells Naamah. He is unmoved by her protestations that
there is also good in them, and that with love this goodness can
flourish.
Does all of this suggest a culture of death ethic: an
anti-human environmentalism verging toward anti-natalism, abortion and
euthanasia? Against this conclusion must be weighed other notes that
speak to the unique dignity of the human person, and even to the culture
of life. Ultimately, the darkest themes in the story can be understood
as reflecting a larger theological question:
When we see Adam and
Eve in the Garden, their Edenic grace (in Catholic theology, original
justice) is visually represented as actual glory or radiance; they shine
like our Lord in his transfigured glory.
This evokes what Pope John Paul II, speaking about evolution and the origin of man,
called “an ontological leap” or discontinuity between man and the rest
of the animal kingdom. Humanity is not simply the natural product of
biological evolution; we are uniquely created in God’s image, with a
spiritual soul immediately created by God.
What is more, the light
of Eden is not entirely extinguished. “I look at you,” one of the
film’s ambiguously fallen angels called Watchers tells Noah, “and I see a
glimmer of Adam again.”
It is Tubal-cain, not Noah, who advocates
an ethic of death. “Feed only those who will fight,” he orders his men,
and teaches Ham that to be a man is equivalent to being able to kill.
He even taunts the Creator: “I give life, I take life away—just as you
do. I am like you, am I not?”
Now consider the words of Noah to
Ila (Emma Watson), once Noah’s adopted daughter, now Shem’s wife (or
bride to be), whom a childhood injury has left barren (and perhaps
unable to engage in intercourse). Ila, aware of the finality of what
looms ahead, miserably tells Noah, “Shem needs a woman—a real woman. And a family. I can’t give him any of that. And why would the Creator want a barren woman on his ark?”
But
Noah won’t hear of this. “When we first took you in,” he tells her, “I
thought you were going to be a burden…but I was wrong. You’re a gift—a
precious, precious gift. Don’t forget how precious a gift you are.” Even
in the face of a world-ending cataclysm, Ila is valuable not only as a
potential mother of offspring, but for herself. Every human person is
unrepeatable.
Justice and Mercy, or Justice vs. Mercy?
But
the movie insists on the importance of having children too. Naamah, in
particular, equates her sons’ ability to father children with their
future happiness. There must be wives; there must be families. (Medium
spoilers follow in the next few paragraphs.)
Without spelling
everything out, there is an all-important pregnancy, and the fate of the
offspring in utero, and of the human race, rests on two visions of
human life, of justice with or without mercy and love.
Why does
the story come down to this very dark question? Why add this plotline?
For this reason: Theologically, it puts father Noah in a position of
reflecting, however dimly, the dilemma of God the Father, who must
either make an end of life on earth (justice, per Genesis 6:7) or allow
some way for life to start again (mercy and love, per Genesis 6:8).
Noah, like God, loves his children, but the demands of justice cannot be
simply denied, to they may be transcended.
With the divine choice
of the fate of his family resting on his shoulders, Noah becomes a
locus for disappointment and anger with God. Naamah unquestioningly
accepts her husband’s authority and follows him almost literally through
hell and high water; but at a certain point she turns on him, and her
language points to things for which Noah was not personally responsible.
In the end, man and woman together make up the image of God, with Noah
more clearly revealing justice and Naamah more closely showing forth
mercy and love.
Are these theological resonances really intended
by the atheist writer-director? I think they are. For all his
provocative expansions, the film is deeply engaged with the biblical
text; the Creator’s presence in the film is palpable, and, without
questioning his existence, the characters debate about him as seriously
as characters in a Bergman film.
Perhaps Noah is, in
part, Aronofsky’s way of giving shape in the realm of imagination to
religious ideas and aspirations that he can’t approach any other way. In
any case, the film attests Aronofsky’s belief, like Noah retelling the
story of creation to his children (and possibly unlike Neil deGrasse
Tyson), that these ancient stories have something meaningful to say to
us today.
