“Noah”

Rated PG-13 for violence, disturbing images and brief suggestive content.

Noah’s story (in “Noah”) is not the Noah from your grandma’s Bible. We all know the plot from the Bible: the world is going to hell in a hand basket. Humans are acting lecherously and living in nasty squalor. (As pre-pubescent Sunday School students, we understood the nasty squalor part, but we would have enjoyed hearing and seeing more about the lecherous sin business, but alas….) Noah grabs his wife and sons and their families and they build an ark and God makes it rain for 40 days and 40 nights and the dove comes back and they land, “The End.” On those points the movie and the Bible agree.

In Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah,” we are told that he (Noah, played by Russell Crowe) and his wife (Jennifer Connelly) are hippie vegetarians and probably members of PETA. They are environmentalists and somewhat anti-industrialists. Who knew? But that is not all. Noah’s grandfather is Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins) who is very wise and has special powers. For this to be a Bible story, one must include the Book of Tolkien to the Book of Genesis.  

The movie throws in some pretty odd twist on Bible stories. Shem gets a comely wife (in the movie) but we are told that she is barren. However, Great-Grandpa Methuselah repairs her reproductive organs and they can have a grand ol’ time making babies after that. Then she gets pregnant, which makes Noah mad and he gets the idea God wants him to become like Abraham and kill the offspring of Shem, which are twin girls, not Isaac; all very confusing.

“Noah” (in Noah) is not a very nice guy, a jerk really. Personally, I wouldn’t invite him to Thanksgiving dinner or even a picnic on a very hot, buggy, and muggy day. He lets poor Ham go randy onto the Ark without any hope of sowing his oats before or during the cruise much less the rest of his life. Ham finds himself a lass (on his own) but Noah leaves her to die, antediluvian. This foreshadows Ham being an ungrateful son and inevitably cursed by Noah. If this were true to the Bible, I would have to take Ham’s side. Good thing the movie is just a movie. According to the Bible, Ham already had a wife when he got on the Ark.

And then there is Japheth: in the movie he is a very young lad with curly hair and an angelic face, hormones yet to rage. He certainly has no wife or even a potential girl friend. No thought is given to him for a mate with which to mate, thank you very much, Noah! Since Europeans are the descendants of Japheth, I should think many of us, in the audience, should be worried about where he is going to find the mother of his descendants. Hello, Noah! We are here in the audience.

Lucky for us, the real Noah, knew the importance of having children and took care of his son’s sexual partners before God flooded the Earth. He, I would let borrow my tools. Maybe make some kosher dogs on the grill and we could talk about the fine points of making pitch and how many inches (or centimeters) in a cubit.

Nothing is odder in “Noah” (the movie) than the creatures called The Watchers.They helped and protected Noah before the flushing away of the sons of Cain. They are giants made of earth and molten rock, a mixture of The Thing in The Fantastic Four, the Hulk, the Ents in Middle Earth, and the Transformers. They are fallen angels, not like demons, mind you, but angels that God placed in time-out for leaving heaven without His permission. While this might send the True Believers into orbit, they should study up on the Nephilim, which is more likely taught in Hebrew School than Sunday School. Frankly, to me and mine, they looked out of place and stupid in Noah (the movie). Had they looked less likely coming from The Book of Marvel and more from of The Book of Spielberg, I could have swallowed it.

Also, in “Noah,” the movie, there are these magic, glowing stones that can make fire and serve as early pregnancy tests. Also there is Tubal-Cain the bad guy (Ray Winston). He looks like a member of Hell’s Angels. Oddly, he steals words from God (post-diluvian) about meat-eating. In the Bible, God told us to eat meat, but in “Noah” (the movie) this anti-vegetarian message comes from greasy Tubal-Cain. Interesting sub-text, yes?

I think “Noah” made me think that the writers extracted Noah not from the Holy Bible, but from the Holy Hobbit Hebrew Kaballah Bible. All that is fair game; I did not expect this “Noah” to be the fundamentalist telling of the flood, nor should anybody else. I did hope it would be interesting.  While the majority of critics find it so, I thought it dull. Two hours and 20 minutes was really too long. A filmmaker, who chooses to use a Bible story, ought to make it far more interesting than an ordinary Sunday School (or Hebrew School) lesson, especially if one has access to mind-blowing CGI effects.

I really didn’t like “Noah” the movie or Noah the character (in the movie). And throwing in the Biblical part of Noah getting sloshed on wine and being naked was unnecessary when the film created an alternative reason why Ham was cursed by Noah. Thanks to this retelling, Ham was the sympathetic character. What was the point?

Well, I think I figured it out. We are being prepared for the sequel to “Noah” — Ham: His Understandable Journey.

“Noah” is blessed with two and a half bow ties, according to the Book of Steve.