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Cross-posting from GC: I literally just got done watching Noah and, yeah, the movie's pretty sick. I could have done away with Ila's little sit-down with Noah at the end, but after doing a bunch of complaining about The Prince of Egypt in the animation thread, it was nice to watch a film inspired by Biblical literature that doesn't sugarcoat God being a ruthless prick. I really wasn't expecting Noah's arc to become as dark as it did, and it's a credit to Aronofsky and Handel that they pulled it off as well as they did. I was particularly intrigued by the Tubal-cain character (Ray Winstone). There's an interesting dynamic that results between himself and Noah after the flood has already happened and he's sneaks aboard the ship. On the one hand, he's clearly a demagogue and corrupting influence, but as Noah is driven more and more mad by his drive to see man blighted from the Earth, it's actually Tubal-cain who comes to reveal himself as knowing something about the nature of God which Noah doesn't possess, which is that "Of course God won't kill all men, he's too proud to destroy something he made in his image. The movie managed to do something really complicated in that it took a really modern conception of God as this kind of inscrutable, distant figure (whereas in Genesis he talks to Noah directly), but not compromise its depiction of history essentially flowing from his command. The most challenging thing the film suggests to modern viewers is that God is fundamentally responsible for both good and evil, but this should not terrify us because we are mere reflections of that unifying essence of divinity. God becomes a metaphor for what we don't understand about human nature. I think it's telling that Aronofsky chose to not use much apocrypha or pseudapocrypha from what I can tell.
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Aug 27, 2014 13:57
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| # ¿ May 23, 2024 03:48 |
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precision posted:One thing that kept bugging me was Noah's, well, logical inconsistency, I guess? This is kind of part-and-parcel with Aronofsky being one of the first adapters of Biblical literature in a long time to respect the basic fallibility of Biblical figures. Basically, Ila's advice to him at the end is no less a misdirection than Tubal-cain's manic ravings or Noah's assurance that he knows God's will: Even if God selects you because you're the 'most moral,' that doesn't mean that you are devoid of immorality or ignorance. In this context, even our ignorant and immoral actions are essentially a part of God's plan. In the example of Noah abandoning the girl - we know that this isn't purely a coincidence of Noah's ignoring God because in the very beginning of the movie we see him being the one who picks up Ila. Later, he tells her he thought she was going to be a burden, indicating that he only did it because he thought that's what God wanted. The point is that Noah never knows God, not completely. But God knows Noah.
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Aug 27, 2014 23:19
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Thwomp posted:There's some articles from earlier in the thread that may dispute this. The snake skin and angels as presented are specifically from Jewish apocrypha/gnosticism. Apocrypha isn't necessarily specifically gnostic, and the article that was posted before was followed up immediately by one that pointed out that it was predicated on some fairly faulty scholarship. It's not like there's no elements of gnosticism in the film - Tubal-Cain is a gnostic; he sees creation as being the evil creation of a perpetually false god. But like Noah in his fetishism of nature over mankind - failing to internalize that there is no delineation between to the two - Tubal-Cain's gnosticism is a mortal self-bastardization that absolves him from truly looking and knowing the perfection of life. When I talk about apocrypha, I don't mean Jewish mysticism or commentary, which are canonical. I specifically mean those myths which are not considered canonical. Again, Tubal-Cain is the most prominent apocryphal figure in the story, as he appears in alternate myths of the flood as a similarly despotic wretch. But, again, his appearance in the film specifically uses mythology to affirm the Torah rather than 'expose' it. On the subject of the luminescence of Adam & Eve and the use of the serpent's skin in ritual, this is not contradictory of midrash, which seems to be the primary inspiration of a lot of Aronofsky's ideas. The demonology of Judaism really isn't comparable to Christianity, where it's primarily accepted that any association with demons is wholly negative. In Jewish folklore, demons are much more ambiguous figures, as they are not only controlled by God, but are born from man, and can be used by him just as they both spiritually and physically corrupt him: quote:The spirits of demons were created on the eve of the sixth day, but before their bodies were formed the Sabbath set in, when rest was proclaimed, and their formation was not consummated. A basic concept of Genesis midrash is that the way humans appear now how they always were, and, quite the contrary, humans now more closely resembles demons than they do God. This is not gnosticism. It reaffirms the perfection of God and man's special agency over himself.
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Aug 29, 2014 21:18
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I just wanted Moses to talk to a crow that accuses him of trying to bone his bird wife. All my intellectual defenses are facetious.
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Aug 30, 2014 02:43
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BOAT SHOWBOAT posted:I still think this movie is one of the best films of the year and while I'm glad that other great films (Gone Girl, Boyhood) are probably going to be recognised I'm a little sad that this is going to be looked over at Awards season. It's definitely still in my top ten. Awards season is always a disappointment, so there's really no point in engaging it except to mock it ruthlessly.
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Oct 25, 2014 17:38
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| # ¿ May 23, 2024 03:48 |
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Harime Nui posted:I just remembered Robocop 2014 and now I feel bad for it. It tried. It succeeded.
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Oct 28, 2014 19:17
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