Responding to Darren Aronofsky's “Noah”

Here is the review of the movie, just this, about six, seven pages long, longer than most reviews. And here are the comments on the movie. Okay. When I ended up – this is – this is another 16 pages.

We have friends that are in movies. We minister people in movies. Like the movie industry is our industry all the way around. So that’s why I am here to talk about it.

But anyway, so we’ve seen the movies that we’re going to be talking about.

And most of the time, I take my cues from the filmmakers, so from the filmmakers and the studios because a lot of times, there are going to be interviews. There’s going to be marketing. People are going to talk about it. We started hearing about Noah over a year-and-a-half ago. So a year-and-a-half ago I wrote a blog and said, “Hey, there’s a flood of Bible movies coming out. Please don’t expect them to be biblically accurate, meaning jot and tittle word-for-word, you know, whatever have you.

Noah is just the first. There’s Pontius Pilot coming out. There’s a Cain and Abel story coming out. There is another I think Moses story coming out. There is a plethora of Bible movies coming out between 2014 and 2015.

In this case with Noah, the filmmaker pretty much kind of put it out there that he was doing a fantastical tale. He wasn’t trying to follow kind of the – and Noah, I mean literally the account in Genesis is so small, but he wasn’t trying to stay very close to that, even though –

Okay, now which version of that story am I taking and what am I going with?

And I’m just going to read through this. And I don’t normally do this, but I think this is a particularly illustrative example. Here’s what this person said. And they’re going to remain unnamed so I can protect the guilty.

“I learned a great lesson on staying focused on the most important thing. On March 21st, 2014, the movie his organization had been promoting, God’s Not Dead, came out in a limited number of theaters around the country. It was a success and I was so glad we jumped onboard to promote it. On March 28th, 2014, the movie Noah arrived in theaters with one of my favorite actors, Russell Crowe, playing Noah. I had heard some negatives about the show not being true to the biblical account, but I wanted to see it anyway.

Late in the evening, someone I trusted very much posted these words about the movie on internal pages for our organization’s leaders. Here’s the quote. ‘Total garbage and blasphemy. Get the word out to other Christians before they waste their time or money as we did. I feel tricked. It was horrible.’

Without hesitation, I immediately went into reactionary mode, sent his comments to everyone I knew, posted it on every social media page to which I had access. That was the mistake. One of the e-mails I sent was answered by a friend who has helped our organization recruit people for the organization. Her comments pointed out the mistake. She said, ‘I believe this e-mail poorly represents the excellent ministry you have at (your organization). I have not yet seen Noah, but I plan to see it, as I plan to see many movies, whether they tell a story based directly on the Bible or not.’

‘Regardless if I enjoy the film or not and regardless of the objective quality of the acting and the storytelling, I will not consider it a waste of time or money. Hollywood is getting back into telling Bible stories, and that’s exciting. I’m thinking Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments.’ And then this is in bold. ‘This is a wonderful opportunity to have a meaningful conversation with people who would never normally want to talk about God, the Bible, or anything religious. The arts are always great conversation starters. This seems like something your organization would be interested in rather than encouraging people to avoid.’

That’s the end of the emphasis. ‘With all due respect, you have an obligation as the head of the (the organization) to set a good example of winsome clear-thinking Christianity. If we, as believers, can be this threatened by a piece of art based on Biblical events and not even claiming to represent them exactly; after all, they did publish a disclaimer in this regard; then it is no wonder we fail so miserably at kind of communication when there are more significant issues to be addressed.’

‘I have huge respect for you and for your organization and simply encourage you to keep striving towards excellence.’” And then this is the reaction of the leader to whom this e-mail was written. “Lesson learned. Noah offers a great opportunity to engage others in this conversation, but we need to see the movie in order to intelligently enter the conversation. Unfortunately, we will have to decide between the importance of being prepared or voting with our money. An article about Noah said it best. The article was called, ‘Noah, a prime opportunity to talk to pagans when Jesus comes it’s too late to choose sides.’”

And that’s the end of the e-mail.

It is reflected in Second Temple Jewish texts around the Bible, around the time of the Bible, works like First Enoch and other such works. So now granted, they aren’t – how can I say this – X-men figures, action figures or something like that, which is what the movie made them into, but you do have issues like this and I actually think under analogy here; when Mel Gibson had the problem in The Passion about how to portray Satan –

We have sinned. We have failed. Like this is our punishment, versus the grace of the Creator or whatever have you. And so there was this wrestling and tension, and the filmmaker did make that however the other pieces of the puzzle come through, and if you just look at the ark and the way that a movie goes anyway, he followed all of the points of a good movie, of a story, you know what I mean. And so – and everything in between. But that’s what he kept bringing us back to; will you choose justice?

Are we going to choose what’s just or this merciful type of thing? Very similar I would say to Les Mis, which of course was nominated for the Academy Awards last year, which also had Russell Crowe starring in it as well. And it was that sense of the law or justice versus mercy. And I think that’s a very real conversation that we can have in 2014 in the 21st century because people are asking that question every day, at least where I am.

Where is this good God that you all speak of, right? Is He just removed and we’re all just making things happen on our own? If there is sin, if there is – I mean if there are bad things happening, is He just going to let them happen? We just had another earthquake on Friday [laughter]; earth starts moving and shaking. People are like, “Okay, are we getting closer to the big one?” You know what I mean?

Nobody went to the door. I said – oh, I said, “This is not good, people.” Like we – [laughter] like we should at least – I said let me just go and stand under the door post like we’re supposed to because –

When he says it that way, he’s putting the text in a category into which it may not actually belong, and that’s harmful. So that’s a side comment.

I know it’s something you had been saying as well, meaning we need to be a part of the conversation. We need to be able to see what it is, you know, the portrayals that are coming out, and be able to bring our perspective to the table. We are completely discounted when we haven’t even seen the movie. Like you can’t even talk about the art if you haven’t seen it. You’re just basing it off of what other people said, and that is not – that is not something that is considered authentic, right?

So we have to be able to experience the art, jump into the dialogue, and again, set our expectations accordingly. I listened to the filmmaker. I read about him. I knew, just as you said, that he was Jewish and also atheist, and I knew that he was creating something that has been in his mind since he was a little kid.

I’m not offended because that’s your idea, right? I’m not offended by that.

It is very, very dark. And we’ve seen that, right? [Laughter]

But what I yearn for as a body of believers, what I yearn for is for us to be able to speak with one another about issues that we may disagree about in a way that is still loving and respectful. I do not come to any table and expect everybody at that table to believe everything that I believe. And then I don’t stop loving you because you believe differently, right?

And the Scripture says I’m supposed to be ready to give a defense, but I’m supposed to do it with reverence and gentleness. And I think those two characteristics sometimes are lacking. And when we do, we actually detract from the very message we’re trying to promote and the very person that we’re trying to promote. Well, that’s kind of a view of Noah. You want to say anything else about Noah before we move on to the other films?