My review of Noah from an atheist perspective

[Bjorn Against]

Those who go to see Noah expecting an uplifting movie about an old man who saves animals are in for a shock. This is not the Noah they teach in Sunday School classes, this is a very dark and sometimes brutal film that is more likely to scare people away from Christianity than to make them embrace it.

This is a movie that people are either going to love or hate, I personally loved it.

Noah is a fantasy movie and it does not try to pretend to be anything else, people who liked Lord of the Rings will love this movie, but people who are expecting a historical documentary are going to hate it. I can see why the fundamentalists are up in arms about this movie because director Darren Aronofsky makes it clear in every scene that this stuff did not actually happen. Anyone who tried to argue that this movie was based on a true story would get laughed at, Aronofosky does not even attempt to hide the logical problems with the source material instead he shines a light on them and goes out of his way to remind people that the story he is telling is pure fantasy, and a very dark fantasy at that.

The God in this movie is not a nice guy, if you were not worshipping him before this movie you certainly won't be afterwards. This movie is far more likely to scare people away from Christianity than to get them to embrace it, the God in this movie kills a lot of people and you see very little good come from him. This is definitely not a kiddie movie and any kids who do see it are likely to become terrified of God. When the flood hits and you hear the screams of people being washed away while Noah tells his family there is no room on on the ark so they can't rescue any of them it is an extremely disturbing moment that will likely give kids nightmares, and there are plenty of other nightmarish scenes as well.

Darren Aronofsky is one of my favorite directors and while Noah is not his best film, it is still a great movie that is sure to get people talking. As an atheist who enjoys the fantasy genre I loved the movie, but after seeing it I totally understand why the fundamentalists hate it. I actually think this will be one of the rare Biblical movies that is more popular with non-religious people than it is with the religious. In order to enjoy Noah you have to be able to accept the story as fiction, but if you do accept that then it is a film that is well worth watching. I would give it a solid three and a half out of four stars.

[rrneck]

1. Based on your review I'll go see it. nt

[edgineered]

4. concur, before reading BA's post I would not have seen it. nt

[pscot]

2. Noah wasn't a historical figure

he appears only in the bible.

[Bjorn Against]

3. Believe me, this movie does not pretend to be history

[Jgarrick]

5. It doesn't have the accuracy of documentaries such as "One Million Years BC"?

How disappointing.

[pscot]

17. This is the way it was

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. Religion aside, it sounds like a pretty good fantasy/adventure movie.

In fact, the whole Old Testament (which, if you are not religious, is merely a collection of Bronze Age fables) is full of good stories. You don't have to believe a word of it to appreciate the drama - there's more violence, death, destruction, sex, passion and crazy special effects than a hundred Hollywood screenwriters could come up with on their own.

[longship]

7. Hint. The Bible account isn't historically accurate either.

Of course, you knew that.

But that is not what the Biblical literalists will claim. And it's why they have their shorts in such a bunch about it. But the Noah story is a bit weird in the Bible. The doublets are intertwined (documentary hypothesis, Doublets) so there are contradictions within a single narrative.

What is a literalist to do? Usually the narrative is homogenized into a single one, where the contradictions are glossed over by application of apologetics. Two creations? No problem. Two Ten Commandment narratives? No problem. (But what happened to the commandment "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk"?)

So it goes with Noah and his ark.

[el_bryanto]

8. How does it show the people other than Noah and his family?

That's the justification for it (in so far as it can be justified) is that the world was so wicked that it was just going to continue being more wicked and depraved.

I'll probably get it on DVD myself; I don't have a lot of time for the movies right now and the Grand Budapest hotel looked more entertaining (and was really wonderful).

Bryant

[Bjorn Against]

11. Nearly everyone in the movie is evil, even Noah himself has a very dark side

I don't want to give any major spoilers so I will just say that that this is a very dark movie. There are really only a few characters that were decent people and even Noah himself has some moments in the film where he becomes quite evil.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

9. If there had been a Noah, he'd have been a bitch. But there wasn't. nt

[cprise]

10. Did it occur to you Aronofsky doesn't believe

in the biblical Noah, either?

I haven't seen the movie, but it occurs to be that he could be making a comment on the veracity of the old version.

[Bjorn Against]

12. Yes, I was aware of that.

Aronofsky has said that he is an atheist.

[localroger]

13. Yeah, YHWH was one murderous bastard

Not much turning of the other cheek or letting those without sin throw the first stone in the old testament.

[MisterP]

14. and that's why the Jews have always caused more problems than Christians--right?

[localroger]

20. That doesn't even make sense.

How your mythical god has supposedly treated you doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how you think your mythical god wants you to treat other people.

[Trajan]

26. Talk about putting words into somebody's mouth ...

That was fucking weird ...

[5X]

15. I heard an interview with Aronofosky where he claims the whole movie

is based on actual texts of the bible and other historical texts.

[Bjorn Against]

16. It is based on the Biblical texts, but it never suggests those texts are based in reality

[LiberalFighter]

24. The other historical texts were not non-biblical.

Based on an interview published in The Atlantic.

[struggle4progress]

18. The story of Noah is unlikely to have been intended primarily as history: it is a retelling

of part of a Gilgamesh saga, with certain changes

A natural guess is that the Hebrews heard the tale during their Babylonian captivity

The Babylonian epic tells of King Gilgamesh's quest for immortality after the death of his friend Enkidu; in the course of his travels, Gilgamesh at point consults Utnapishtim, who had been awarded immortality for his role in saving life on earth in a great flood by building a great boat

This is an interesting bit: it obviously begs to be read as, If you want to live forever, save lives other than your own! -- and such a reading suggests the old saga has a moral and theological dimension

But Noah is a retelling of that story by slaves and so does not consider a king the principle protagonist

Instead, directly at the beginning of the Hebrew version, we are told: the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful and took as wives all they chose

This is an evident circumlocution by slaves for the ability of men in power being able to force themselves on lower class women, and the very next verse indicates that it is transcendently troubling

The verse after that repeats the theme: the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them

And instantly after, we are told: the Lord saw that the evil of man was great in the earth, and the inclinations of his heart were entirely evil

The story ceases to be about a king: it becomes a tale of overlords destined to be swept away

[edhopper]

19. That is an interesting reading of it.

I knew it was co-opted from the Babylonian myth, but did not think about the social-cultural context.
Unlike Moses, which is clearly the Babylonian myth made into a story about Jewish slavery (with a location change to Egypt.)

[okasha]

23. Folk memory is long and persistent.

The Babylonian story of the great flood may reflect the formation of the Black/Euxine Sea when the Mediterranean broke through the Bosporus and inundated the lowland basin beyond.

[edhopper]

25. That was still a few thousand years before Gilgamesh

but who can say.
Though, living between to big rivers, it's not surprising that a Flood story is part of their mythology either.

Of course it makes little sense for the Hebrews in the desert (except that they got it from the Babylonians.

[okasha]

36. True enough.

But folk memory can persist that long. The Hopi people, for example, have been telling anthropoligists for the last century that they came to the Americas across an ocean. And anthropologists have been insisting all that time that the Hopi came via Beringia. Then someone got the bright idea of doing some genome testing, and behold, the Hopi are carrying around Pacfic Islander DNA.

Ancient peoples got around a lot more, and knew a lot more about their world, than we moderns tend to give them credit for.

[edhopper]

37. I don't know about that

at least for educated people. As NDT has pointed out in Cosmos, the early people became very good at reading the signs that nature gives on what to expect as the seasons change, the behavior of animals, etc...
Of course they also started seeing patterns that weren't there and hence formed religions around random, unconnected phenomena.

[cbayer]

21. Great review and sounds like something I would really like.

I love a big, epic tale and don't particularly care whether it comes from the bible, from historical narratives or is totally fictional.

Thanks for the review.

[Goblinmonger]

22. Pretty much how I interpreted it

(atheist as well). I love Aronofsky. Not near my favorite film of his but still very enjoyable.

I may start a separate thread not to step on you toes but to be one with spoilers. I totally get why RW Fundies pissed their pants over this film.

[Prophet 451]

27. So, as a movie, it's pretty good?

I'm a Luciferian Satanist and, while I'm unable to see it at the cinema, I'll try and catch it when it hits rental.

[AtheistCrusader]

34. Frankly, in the bible

Lucifer is lot less of an asshole, than god.

If I believed in ANY of it, I'd probably side with the one that didn't want us stupid and ignorant, forever worshipping a god.

[Prophet 451]

35. And there's Luciferian Satanism in a nutshell!

I can't force myself to not believe, but I can have enough self-respect not to worship the maniac. We consider the apple in the garden (no, not literal, it's a metaphor) to be the moment when Lucifer led us into a capacity for moral self-determination, when we went from "thou shalt not" to "I will not".

That said, please don't think I'm trying to convert you. I've had enough of that myself. It's far more important for you to make up your own mind and walk your own path than for our paths to converge.

[catbyte]

28. I'm just glad all the animals were CGI

[Goblinmonger]

29. And they made up pretty much all new ones.

The film very clearly supports evolution.

[Quixote1818]

30. One of the most boring, dark, depressing movies I have ever seen.

I think it was interesting to see everything Noah was saddled with and I can see how he would think everyone would need to die, even his family. There was certainly some interesting and thought provoking things the director took on but ultimately for me it was depressing as hell. Hopefully it will depress a lot of Christians and chase them away from these idiot Biblical stories.

[AlbertCat]

31. Sounds dreary

Like every fantasy film lately.

Did you see "Man of Steel"? Dreary, and just no fun at all. No sense of humor. No color even. It might as well be in black and white.

The remake of "Total Recall"...the same black and white, no fun....but loud.... bunch of dreary noise.

Even the Harry Potter films have no color and get drearier and drearier as they go along.



Somebody make a comedy!!! ...that isn't about how stupid men are.....


Anyway, I'll catch it sometime when it's on HBO or something.



P.S. The costumes look hysterically funny, but again...colorless.

[AtheistCrusader]

33. Well, Harry Potter is supposed to get dreary, and dark.

It's an existential battle against evil. Starts out fun-ish as the kids are young, but ratchets up as they get older, the fight more desperate.

The contrast between love and hate is made all the more precious by the undertones in that movie.

Man of Steel, less so.

[AtheistCrusader]

32. I started laughing in the trailer when Noah was depicted as swinging a METAL headed axe.

Because I guess hacking down enough trees to build an ark the size of a stadium with a sharp rock, like he would have chronologically had to do, just beggars belief a bit too much.

[daleo]

38. The poster for the movie that I saw

Had Noah standing there looking mean, holding an axe. The image said "slasher flic" to me. I suppose it is the ultimate slasher story, in a way.

[AtheistCrusader]

43. No higher body count on record to my knowledge.

[struggle4progress]

39. That may not be anachronistic:

Regarding Gilgamesh, which seems to be the source of the Noah narrative,

... The earliest Akkadian versions are dated to the early second millennium, most probably in the eighteenth or seventeenth century BC, when one or more authors drew upon existing literary material to create a single epic. The "standard" Akkadian version, consisting of twelve tablets, was edited by Sin-liqe-unninni sometime between 1300 and 1000 BC, and was found in the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh ...

and this indeed may be within the chalcolithic period for the region

... The first half of the 4th millennium (4000-3500 BCE) is sometimes called the Chalcolithic (Copper-Stone age) ...

... Copper probably first came into use as the earliest non-precious metal employed by the Sumerians and Chaldeans of Mesopotamia, after they had established their thriving cities of Sumer and Accad, Ur, al'Ubaid and others, somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago ...

... In Mesopotamia, the Mesopotamia Bronze Age began about 2900 BC ...


A MESOPOTAMIAN ARSENICAL COPPER AXE HEAD CIRCA 2100 B.C.

[Goblinmonger]

40. Emma Watson says the time setting is ambiguous

We all know Aronofsky took liberties with the story anyway.

In October 2012, Emma Watson commented on the setting of the film: "I think what Darren's going for is a sense that it could be set in any time. It could be set sort of like a thousand years in the future or a thousand years in the past. ... You shouldn't be able to place it too much."

That is from Wikipedia which gives the link to the video interview I watched at one point.

[struggle4progress]

41. That's interesting. I once read a Rabbinical commentary of Noah that suggested

the story described how we ourselves should behave now and in the future, rather than as a story from the past

[AtheistCrusader]

42. Most estimates I've seen vary but would place the story some 400+ years earlier than that axe head.

Keep in mind, the Akkadian version is a compilation/evolution of even older works, that are lost.

It is possible they had metal axes when the story was alleged to have happened, but small. (also the design of the axe head on the poster is extremely modern/western, you won't find its like in any copper/bronze age content museums.)