Noah film

Mon, 10 Nov 2014 23:16:45 GMT

The Noah film was actually interesting, although only so-so to actually watch. It made more sense as a story than I was expecting, more sense than I expected from most Noah films.

In many ways it felt like a vision of interesting theology, an interesting view of the early pre-flood world with all sorts of weirdnesses which are gone now, interesting moral questions, interspersed with an angry red pen scribbling "needs more fighting!"

The ark was the least ship-like ark I've ever seen, more like a cuboidal container ship. Which I guess makes as much sense as anything else.

It was full of quite interesting questions -- I don't know if any of these come from religious tradition, I had the impression most of them were made up on the spot, but they fit the *sort* of thing you'd expect.

The world was populated with mostly descendants of Cain, who did all the falling-into-wickedness, here portrayed as over-building an industrial civilisation and over-hunting, in contrast to Noah who won't even pick flowers. Noah is the only proper descendant of Seth.

There were "fallen" angels, more of the curiosity, mischief and disobedience, cursed to roam the earth as stone giants with a hidden fire, until those killed defending the ark are freed to return to heaven.

Noah (Russel Crowe) is seized with doubt whether the human race should continue. He has three sons and an adopted daughter (Emma Watson) who is de-facto betrothed to eldest Shem, but can't have children. He tries to rescue some more women or girls, but fails. And takes this as a sign the human race should die out. And then Emma Watson is miraculously cured again, and everyone else takes this as a sign, but he doesn't. Which I think is wrong, but is exactly the sort of morality tale which plays out in the bible with a hundred different interpretations, like Abraham and Isaac.

In fact, there's almost quite an ecological message. Humanity destroys the world through over-hunting, over-mining, over-consumption and violence, which leads to a giant water-level-rise. The best, strongest people are completely vegetarian, probably vegan; eating meat is potentially tasty but really horrible. Serious thought is given to not continuing the human race, but on balance, it's decided on mercy.

And there's surprisingly little God. Noah has a prophetic dream. There's a few miraculous things left over from the early days of the Earth. But other than that, everyone wants to love or resent the creator but felt abandoned by Them. There's mention of temptation, but it's all abstract, there's no personification of the devil. I'd assumed the film was pushed by someone pushing a particular Christian ideology, but now I'm not sure, it seemed to try hard to be interesting and open, even if it had some unfortunate flaws.

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Noah film