SPOILER ALERT: RUSSELL CROW WILL CALL MY REVIEW IRRATIONAL. I - TopicsExpress

SPOILER ALERT: RUSSELL CROW WILL CALL MY REVIEW IRRATIONAL. I love movies. I love Russell Crowe; his movies tend to be existentially uplifting and inspirational. I love Sir Anthony Hopkins; he always provides a thought-provoking performance whether as a doctoral cannibal or a twentieth century novelist. And with all the media hype surrounding Noah, I had very high expectations of it. I went into it hoping the critics were wrong, that this was going to be a great movie, and that it was going to be inspirational. It looked like it was going to be a movie of epic, scratch that, biblical proportions. The inconvenient truth about Noah is that its anything but epic. In fact, if only it wasnt advertised as an interpretation of Noah, I would have enjoyed it more. Before we go any further: Noah director Darren Aronofsky kept up to his promise. Noah is “the least biblical biblical film ever made.” That was his first mistake. By making a non-biblical, biblical film he already opened up a can of worms. While he has the right to do so, a non-biblical, biblical film is the equivalent of doing a movie about African Americans, but using all European-descendant actors in black-face. Whether or not the intention is to be offensive, in reality, it actually is. The point is the intent: clearly Aronofsky wasnt creating a faith-based storyline, which isnt necessary; however, to deliberately change the story with a predetermined agenda, at best Id call it propaganda; at worst Id call it a hostile takeover. What it seems Aronofsky did was steal the storyline from the bible, hollowed out everything he deemed unnecessary, and recreated it as he saw fit. Some might call this ingenious originality. I call it literary terrorism. It would be one thing if the interpretation strayed with creative license. But by entitling the movie Noah brings the high expectation that this will be the story of Noah. In reality, Evan Almighty was closer to the real story of Noah and more inspirational. Aronofskys movie was more like The Last Temptation of Christ, where the writers and director took a deliberate stray from the text in order to make particular theological and existential purpose. The difference here is that novelist Nikos Kazantzakis, screen writer Paul Schrader, and director Martin Scorsese set the biblical expectations low by entitling it The Last Temptation of Christ. Here with Noah, there is no theological purpose: its merely hijacking the story to get people to come to see it. So, wheres the propaganda? From the opening scene of the movie, its clear that Aronofsky is critiquing industrialization to the point of environmentalist condemnation. How convenient that the people who die in the deluge are the industrialist men who have destroyed the environment...not to mention that Aronofsky perpetuates a complete misinterpretation of dominion over the animals. Man does not have mere dominion for powers sake. Genesis, and the subsequent chapters in the Bible, make it clear that mans dominion over nature is to practice stewardship--that authority and mastery does not mean tyranny and abuse. The irony of it all is that if Aronofsky took a more faithful approach to the story of Noah, his message of environmentalism would have come across more clearly and more genuinely. Aronofskys portrayal of the religious in Noah is utterly repugnant. I had no issue with the use of Creator, while other critics have noted that the Genesis story references the name of God 20 times and Lord 9 times. I had a problem with how Aronofsky chose to portray people of faith. Anytime a character was speaking to the Creator, they were looking up to a barren sky--as if this Creator was nothing more than a figment of their imagination. And Noah, the character who is most faithful to the Creator, borders on the schizophrenic, even suggesting that the Creator would support infanticide in order to carry out His plan. In the end, it is the extremely biased portrayal of the religious as violently mental basketcases from the point of view of an atheist. One of the most questionable scenes in my opinion was when Noah recites the Genesis poem of Creation. There is an animation of Darwinian evolution while the recitation occurs. Now, while I am not a Ken Hamian creationist, I am not a Darwinian evolutionist. I believe in intra-kingdom evolution but not inter-kingdom evolution. In other words, birds evolve into higher forms of birds, fish evolve into higher forms of fish, lizards evolve into higher forms of lizards, humans evolve into higher forms of humans--its observable. Fish evolving into lizards evolving into rats into birds into humans--that has yet to be observed or even proven by the fossil record. To suggest that the book of Genesis is merely a recitation of Darwinian evolution is lacking academic integrity and serves only to confuse and disquiet. The only glimmer of hope I experienced was in the character of Methuselah, played by Sir Anthony Hopkins. The whimsical yet philosophical character was playful but enjoyable. And any amount of existential perspective came from this characters lips. However, of the two and a half hours, Methuselah lasts for about twenty minutes of on-screen time. Aronofskys Noah is just as fictional as Al Gores An Inconvenient Truth: propaganda that serves only to confuse, divide, and conquer. It turns the Genesis story into the atheistic view of it: a fairytale. Fortunately, from this English teachers perspective, this is the classic paradigm of the book being so much better than the movie. If only people decided to read more and think for themselves instead of having a select minority process information for them.