Discussion Guide for Noah, the movie starring Russell Crowe
Love it or hate it, Darren Aronofsky's movie Noah will start people talking. If you are planning on seeing Noah, why not go with some friends and get together after to discuss it. Talking to others will enrich your experience.
To get some ideas, check out our Noah Discussion Guide.
Love it or hate it, Darren Aronofsky's movie Noah will start people talking. If you are planning on seeing Noah, why not go with some friends and get together after to discuss it. Talking to others will enrich your experience.
To get some ideas, check out our Noah Discussion Guide.
Phil Cooke, a media consultant who has been involved with the Paramount Pictures movie Noah, posted a blog recommending Christians see the movie. Paramount then asked him to create a short video featuring Christian leaders talking about the movie, followed by a number of quotes from pastors and ministry leaders, all of whom have seen the movie. This is clearly an effort to gain acceptance among Christians for the movie. But it's worth watching.
The Movie
Darren Aronofsky, the director of the new film, Noah, is not the first to put Noah on the big screen or on television – just the most spectacular so far. Usually the biblical story is a framework on which the writer and director hang their own story with their own viewpoint.
Noah’s Ark (1928)
Written by Darryl F. Zanuck; Directed by Michael Curtiz One year after the first commercially successful movie with sound, Warner Brothers released a part-talkie that was the most expensive film it had made: Noah’s Ark. “Three years in the making . . . a cast of ten thousand . . . the most overpowering scenes ever filmed.” The primitive special effects were marvelous. Huge curtains of water splashed down on hundreds of “pagans” fleeing the Flood. Mighty structures crumbled as “the spectacle of the ages unfolds as a tidal wave of power.” It was a little too real because in the climactic flood scene three extras drowned and one had to have his leg amputated. Noah’s Ark tells a love story set in World War I. Our hero, a young American playboy living in France, falls in love with a German girl. They marry, he rescues her from a firing squad, and when they are trapped, a minister compares the blood of modern war to the world before the time of the Great Flood. The film then flashes back to the time of Noah with the main characters of the World War I love story playing characters in the Noah story. Noah’s Ark is epic and dramatic. But don’t look to it for biblical accuracy. It appears as if Darryl Zanuck, who wrote the story, relied more on Cecil B. DeMille’s Ten Commandments (the 1923 version) than on Scripture! When Noah hears from God, he walks up a mountain, encounters a burning bush (like Moses in the Bible), and God zaps two giant tablets in the side of a mountain with words. The tablets turn like the pages of a book. One blogger describes all this as “endearingly goofy.”[1] Captain Noah and His Magical Ark (1967-1994) WPVI-TV, Philadelphia For more than twenty-five years W. Carter Merbreier, an ordained Lutheran minister, and Patricia, his wife, starred as Captain and Mrs. Noah in a Philadelphia children’s show, Captain Noah and His Magical Ark. At its height, the daily program was syndicated to twenty-two markets across the U.S. and was watched by more children in Philadelphia than Sesame Street and Captain Kangaroo combined. Evan Almighty (2007) Screenplay written by Steve Oedekerk; Directed by Tom Shadyac Biblical epics are usually expensive, especially when animals and floods are involved. Evan Almighty is not a biblical epic, but at $175 million, it is the most expensive comedy ever made. In a funny sense, the story line of Evan Almighty follows the biblical story of Noah more closely than either Michael Curtiz’s Noah’s Ark or Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. Evan Baxter wins one of New York’s congressional seats by promising he will change the world and moves from Buffalo to northern Virginia. When he prays that he might actually change the world, animals start following him around two by two, he grows a beard that reappears whenever he tries to shave it, and ancient tools are delivered to his house. Then God appears to Evan and tells him to build an ark, which would let him at least save his town, if not the world. |
On the appointed day, the animals enter the ark, the rains begin, a
shoddily built dam above Prestige Crest, the town where Evan lives,
bursts, and the ark floats through the flooded streets of Washington,
D.C., coming to rest in front of the Capitol (Capitol Hill isn’t as
impressive as Mt. Ararat, but it’s not bad), where Congressman Evan
Baxter is able to turn the tide on a Public Land Act, proposed by the
same crooked congressman who built the defective dam.
God appears again to Evan and tells him the real way to change the world is to do one Act of Random Kindness (A.R.K.) at a time. Everyone except the crooked congressman lives happily ever after. Noah (2014) Written by Darren Aronofsky, Ari Handel, and John Logan; Directed by Darren Aronofsky Darryl Zanuck told the story of Noah and the Flood as a flashback in a love story that showed the blood and violence of World War I. Steve Oedekerk set the story of Noah in modern suburban Washington, D.C. Darren Aronofsky makes a very different adaptation. He said his story is “about environmental apocalypse. Noah was the first environmentalist.” Noah stars Russell Crowe as Noah, Jennifer Connelly as his wife, Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah—Noah’s cave-dwelling grandfather—and Emma Watson as Noah’s adopted daughter. “Rediscover the epic story of one man and the most remarkable event in our history,” a trailer said. With collaborator Ari Handel, Aronofsky published in 2011 a French-language graphic novel that told their story of God’s choice of Noah to save the planet. He then used the graphic novel to help sell the film to Paramount. The world of Aronofsky’s Noah is a bleak one—the earth is scorched, devastated by man’s disrespect for the environment. Unlike others, Noah and his family live off the land and “heal it as best we can.” His animal hospital cares for wounded animals and those who survive evil poachers. The trees, the animals, the environment—“All God created is dying.” Noah has recurring dreams of a flood and seeks advice from his grandfather, Methuselah. Methuselah tells Noah that God has chosen him for a reason and that he should respond with obedience and courage. He gives Noah a magic seed that grows into a forest, which Noah cuts down to build the ark. The animals come to the ark two by two, and the rains start. Noah decides the only reason God preserved him and his family is to make sure the animals on the ark return to the earth safely. If mankind disappeared, “it would be a better world.” His family should have no more births so that humans will eventually die out and then “the creatures of the earth, the world itself, shall be safe.” But one of his daughters-in-law is pregnant. If it is a boy, Noah will let it live; but if it is a girl, it will be killed. The woman gives birth to twin girls and Noah sets out to kill them both while the animals on the ark help pin down his family. But he is too weak to carry out his task. “I can’t do it,” he says to himself and to God. “I am sorry.” The movie concludes with his daughter-in-law asking Noah to teach his grandchildren “about the world around them and how to live in it. . . . Maybe if you give them your wisdom, they will do better with their world than we did with ours.” This description is adapted from a summary by movie critic and screenwriter Brian Godawa, one of the few outsiders to read the script by the fall of 2013.[2] Godawa points out that “in the script, what God cares about is the environment, not so much man. As Noah reveals, ‘The world squirms beneath our foot, a poisoned husk. The Creator sees this, He mourns it, and will tolerate it no longer. He would (rather) annihilate all in an instant than watch this creeping rot. . . . We must treat the world with mercy so that the Creator will show us mercy.’” Why was Noah’s budget $150 million? For one thing, all the animals are digital creations. The result includes the most complex scene ever created by the amazing artists at Industrial Light & Magic. “I don’t care how many Bible stories or translations you’ve read,” said film critic and screenwriter Drew McWeeny, “and I don’t care how many films based on those stories you’ve seen. You have never seen anything like what Darren Aronofsky has planned for Noah.” |
[1] Noah’s Ark (1928) and its debt to DeMille, Peter T. Chattaway, June 11, 2007, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2007/06/noahs-ark-1928-and-its-debt-to-demille.html
[2] http://godawa.com/movieblog/darren-aronofskys-noah-environmentalist-wacko/
[2] http://godawa.com/movieblog/darren-aronofskys-noah-environmentalist-wacko/