Thoughts on Noah, the Movie

So, Friday afternoon we went to see the movie, Noah, at a movie complex in Watertown, NY.  There is a ton of reviews of the movie, many of which can be read at Rotten Tomatoes, so let me simply share some thoughts rather than do a full critical analysis.

However the critics may feel about the various aspects of Noah, from a theological perspective the movie embodies a fascinating contemporary dialogue between the biblical story found in Genesis 6-9 and modern culture.  Both the original tale and the modern remake are mythic descriptions of God's struggle with destructive, prideful humanity, the modern movie version being a remythologizing of the story in a contemporary context. There are both similarities and differences, but it is the differences that are most interesting and instructive.

 In the original, God is very clearly present, while in the movie "the Creator" is hidden and speaks through visions that are open to interpretation.  In Genesis, Noah is the very prototype of the faithful man, but in the movie he is constantly conflicted and apparently misinterprets God's will concerning the survival of the human race.  He also comes across as something of a more up to date zealot.  And where the emphasis in Genesis is on the destruction of wicked humanity, a key theme in the movie is the environmental salvation of Planet Earth and its non-human life.  In the movie's version of the epic, Earth was undergoing a massive environmental crisis that was impoverishing humanity as well as destroying the rest of life on the planet.

While reviewers note a number of striking parallels with The Lord of the Rings trilogy (the rock encrusted, over-sized "Watchers" of this movie, for example, look suspiciously like stony versions of Peter Jackson's visualization of Tolkien's Ents), there is an important difference.  The boundaries between good and evil are generally clearly drawn in Tolkien's trilogy; good guys are good and bad guys are bad.  That is less the case in Noah; Noah himself acts unwisely at times and comes across as only relatively good.  His son, Ham, is a flawed figure who for a time allies himself with the evil protagonist of the film, Tubal-cain (who is rotten to the core).  Noah himself feels the inherent evil in himself and those he loves, which is why he believed that they must not become the seed of a renewed human race—a fear not shared by the Creator, apparently.  This is to say that the biblical story is highly dualistic while this contemporary rendering is much less so.  Just as the movie's optics tend to be darkish grays, so does Noah and his family live in a world that is more gray than black or white.

In a moment of theological boldness, the move contains a rendering of Genesis 1 and the seven days of creation that clearly leaves room for evolution.  That too brings the story of Noah into the 21st century and aptly illustrates the manner in which the movie is a remythologizing of the biblical original.  Our larger society is trending haphazardly away from absolutist dualism with its hard and fast boundaries to a more realist, less dualistic postmodern worldview that is also less bounded by the agendas of organized, institutional Christianity.  This movie version of the biblical story is a fascinating rendering of the old, old stories for our time.  It is not scripture.  It is a comment and even a meditation on scripture that puts the story in a contemporary idiom for our reflection.  It invites us to engage in our own dialogue with the story of the flood, and in fact encourages us to actually go back and open our Bibles and read the original script again.

There are a couple of nice touches in the movie.  It solves the problem of how to feed and care for all the animals in the ark by having Noah's family mix a potion that when burned as incense puts them all to sleep for the duration (a kind of sci-fi suspended animation apparently).  The movie also conveniently has Noah plant a magic seed that grows a huge forest, which solves the problem of where he got all the lumber for the ark; and it has the Watchers assist in building it, which solves the problem of how Noah and his family could build such a huge craft.  In short, if there is science  fiction, which provides imaginative, even playful commentary on science, then Noah is might be considered as biblical fiction in an almost sci-fi mode: an imaginative, even playful commentary on the Bible.

Reviewers pan some of the acting in the movie; they criticize it from an artistic, cinematic perspective.  But, I found it interesting and instructive from a theological and biblical point of view.  If you haven't seen it and are concerned for such things as faith, scripture, and theological reflection, I highly recommend it.  It is fun.

Totem Poles & Missionaries: A Tale with no Ending

A few postings back, I reported on the sad destruction of a local Lewis County historical monument by a right-wing sect group.  The monument was to an early 19th century church located in the long abandoned community of Stow Square, NY, which was just up the road from the present town of Lowville.  The monument was in the shape of an obelisk, which this sect found offensive because thousands of years ago and thousands of miles from Lewis County the ancient Egyptians used obelisks as sacred pillars.

This kind of narrow, zealous, and unloving thinking has a long, "rich" history.  Another and much more important manifestation was the destruction of Pacific coast totem poles by 19th century missionaries who assumed without any study that the totem poles are elements of a false religion.  They amount to devil worship.  A website dedicated to totem poles, totempole.net, addresses this belief, writing (here),

Totem poles were never objects of worship; the association with "idol worship" was an idea from local Christian missionaries. The same assumption was made by certain early European explorers, but later explorers such as Jean-François de La Pérouse noted that: totem poles were never treated reverently; they seemed only occasionally to generate allusions or illustrate stories; and were usually left to rot in place when people abandoned a village.

Still, the missionaries tried to stamp out not only the use of totem poles but also the cultures that produced them.  And, evidently, they nearly succeeding.  Fortunately, however, according to an Al Jazeera report (see the video clip below), the art of making totem poles is experiencing a rebirth.

This revival of an ancient art is important from an artistic perspective and from a cultural one.  I know from personal experience with tribal folks in Southeast Asia that indigenous cultures give deep meaning to those who share in a local culture.  They find their identity in their language, cuisine, art, folkways, and beliefs. At the same time, exposure to the their culture enriches the lives of others.   All of this is one manifestation of God's creation of our world and us.  We are created to live in culture,  and the more of it, the greater diversity of it, the better.  Amen.

Mixed Message

You see the photo on the left?  I found it on a Presbyterian church website, which is neither here nor there except to explain where it originated.    On that website it illustrates an announcement concerning a small-group study opportunity being offered by the church during Lent.  Now,  viewed with American eyes it is a creative poster that combines the symbols of our traditional faith (the Bible) and our busy, helter-skelter modern day life (the shoes) with Jesus' call to follow him.

But, viewed from a Southeast Asian perspective this artful poster is an awful eyesore.  It combines images of what is holy (the Bible) and what is profane (the shoes) in a culturally offensive way.  The Bible represents what is high, holy, and respected.  It is associated bodily with the head, which is the highest part of the body physically and symbolically.  Shoes are associated with the feet, which are the lowest, dirtiest, and most objectionable part of the body physically and symbolically.

In Thailand, for example,  books in general are held in high regard and one never ever places a book of any kind, let alone a holy one, next to shoes.  I remember once having to gently remind a fellow Westerner to take his shoes off of a set of published materials where he placed them after having taken his shoes off to sit on a mat and share in a traditional northern Thai meal.  He blushed, as he should have.  The picture to the left is much worse than that.  it juxtaposes two dirty, probably smelly common shoes with the Bible.  "Follow Me"??  The intended message, you see, is totally lost.  Indeed, it is hard to convey just how offensive the picture is and how much it obscures that message.

There is not one thing wrong in our American context with the poster.  My point is nothing more than to remember that in matters of faith there are differing perspectives, ones that are linked to culture as well as religious heritage.  In our increasingly multicultural world, we need to stay sensitive to the fact that our way of seeing things is not the only way.  Other eyes, trained in other ways see things differently than we.