Darren Aronofsky's Noah - Deceived by the Snake Again

Much has been written about Darren Aronofsky's Noah, so I won't attempt a detailed review.  That has already been done.   I thought it was maybe the most unpleasant film I've ever seen, with maybe the worst score.   The acting was fine, but the telling of the ancient story, though true to the general outline of Genesis 6-9, veered into some rather troubling waters.   

We all know the basic arc of the tale:  The earth is overrun by wickedness, so the "creator" sends judgment in the form of a massive flood.  One man builds a huge floating box to rescue enough animals to repopulate the earth and not coincidentally, saves himself and his family.   That outline is intact.  

Without recounting all the plot details, three things troubled me.   

One: It was well publicized that Aronofsky might have imposed an "environmentalist" agenda onto the story.  He is quoted as saying “It’s about environmental apocalypse which is the biggest theme, for me, right now for what’s going on on this planet. So I think it’s got these big, big themes that connect with us. Noah was the first environmentalist.”  So it did bother me that at one point in the film Noah's agenda became clear in a dark and ugly turn - he was convinced humans were the evil that needed to be wiped off the earth and so his mission was to make sure that only the animals survived.   Noah then goes into a bit of a mad rage to insure that none of his sons would be able to have any offspring, and when the only childbearing female aboard the ark is found to be pregnant, he determines the child must die if it is a female.  It turns out to be twins, and he is even more committed to the idea that both must die so that humans do not survive.

I know that isn't part of the Biblical account and I am unsure if that is a part of any of the hundreds of flood stories that exist from various cultures across the globe.   For my part that seemed to confirm a radical environmentalist agenda.   Such as this quote:  “Man is no more important than any other species… It may well take our extinction to set things straight.(David Foreman, Earth First! spokesman, quoted by M. John Fayhee in Backpacker magazine, September 1988, pg. 22) 

But that wasn't the only troubling thing.

Two:  Noah and his family receive aid from a group of odd CGI characters called "The Watchers".   Some ancient mythology surrounding the flood from the book of Enoch depicts the Watchers as fallen angels, connected in some way to the story of the Nephilim, suggested to be the offspring of a mating between these fallen angels  and human women.   All stuff of speculation, and to some degree fair game in a retelling of the story.

But in Aronofsky's film, the fallen angels fall to earth because they helped man and then become encrusted in earth and rock. They walk and talk like Peter Jackson's version of the Ents in Lord of the Rings and act as heroes in the film.   These Watchers help build the ark and fight off the murderous mob which seeks to take control of it.  In the end they die and their spirits are whisked off to the heavens as they  have earned their redemption.

Again that just seemed out of place and odd and the notion of fallen angels (demons to be specific) earning redemption by crushing dozens of humans seemed a little off the mark.

But the most troubling bit involved the snake.

Three:  Several times in the film, we see a flashback to the garden of Eden.   We see a glowing snake with rather intriguing eyes slithering across a surreal grass.  At one point the snake sheds its skin and slinks away.   Adam and Eve are portrayed as glowing creatures of light who grasp at a piece of fruit that pulses like a living heart.

Ok, maybe some artistic license, right?   Light could represent purity, Adam and Eve before the fall.   But early in the film Noah's father is explaining a few things to Noah and something odd happens.  He has the skin of the snake.  He wraps it around his arm and the skin begins to glow.  He then reaches out to touch Noah in some sort of quasi-sacramental act but does not complete it because the evil nemesis Tubal-Cain shows up and murders Noah's father and takes the snake skin, which appears again later in the film.

I immediately thought, what is the meaning of the snake skin?   The snake in the biblical story is the deceiver, why  would Noah's father have the skin of the snake and why did it glow?

Later, after the evil Tubal-Cain somehow stows away aboard the ark and remains undetected for an entire year, surviving by eating the animals on the ark (really bad writing) he attempts to kill Noah but is instead killed by Ham, Noah's son.  Noah eventually recovers the snake skin and after deciding not to kill his twin granddaughters he repeats the ceremony his father started with him.   He wraps the skin around his arm and it glows with light, then he touches the foreheads of the twin girls.

I admit I didn't get it.  But one PhD. theologian did.  Dr Brian Mattson, (Ph.D. Systematic Theology, University of Aberdeen) wrote a review of the film that identified a number of elements that seem to be tied to the ancient Gnostic heresy and/or the Jewish cult of Kaballah.  (Important to note that Mattson was cautiously optimistic about the movie before he saw it).

He notes that the strange glowing metal that is used for all kinds of purposes in the film is called "Zohar" which is the name of the sacred text of Kaballah.   He notes that in Gnostic circles fallen angels can in fact be redeemed and so the scene of the watchers shedding their mortal corrupt physical shells and returning to beings of spirtual light in the higher realms makes sense from a gnostic perspective.   He notes that in some of these texts, Adam and Eve were beings of light without bodies, as in Gnosticism, the physical realm is seen a "lower" and the spiritual realm "higher".   After the temptation and fall, they, like the watchers, were encased in flesh.

And he notes that in some of these extra-biblical accounts, the serpent is actually wiser and better than the "creator", because the "creator" only kept Adam and Eve away from the fruit of the tree to keep them away from knowledge of the divine.  The serpent represents "Sophia" or "wisdom", so the light of the snakeskin seems to suggest it is the serpent who gives "light" and the "creator" who wants to enslave.  

There was much discussion about why the name "God" was never uttered in the film.  Mattson suggests that in Gnostic thought, the creator was actually a lesser deity in a pantheon of deities.   In fact, the creator was something of an arrogant jerk.  The fact that all the characters in the movie refer only to "the Creator" and never to "The Lord" or any form of a word akin to an omnipotent "God" seems even mores suspicious in that light.

Now it is quite possible that Aronofsky's vision incorporates a lot of elements of a lot of different notions.  But what is clear is that in these three particulars, the film departs dramatically from the Biblical story, not merely in incidental details, but in very significant and troubling ways that alter the entire meaning of the story.  I do not mean simply that it departs from a rigid, literalistic Young-Earth Creation viewpoint.   Even if one takes the story as "myth", the myth would be intended to teach certain truths and Aronofsky's film departs from those.  Peter Chattaway at Patheos wrote a rebuttal to Mattson, suggesting Mattson misread the film, to which Mattson responded.

Details of interpreted symbols aside, the problems remain. Instead of the Ark saving both animals and a remnant of the human race, the Ark is portrayed as a means to save the "innocents" (the animals) and the question is left open as to whether "the creator" even wanted humans to survive.  In the Biblical narrative, the ark  is a vessel to save Noah and his family, but in the film Noah, not the creator, decides to have mercy on his granddaughters and allow the earth to be repopulated with humans.

And both demons (fallen angels) and the tempter (Satan himself) are portrayed in a way that gives them more positive influence over the story than "the creator".  All other issues aside those three elements bothered me in the film.  And in the end it is the skin of the serpent that provides the final blessing over the family of Noah, not a word is uttered by the silent "creator".  So I was troubled by the film.

But I was more troubled by the fact that Christian leaders and others who I thought should have known better, did not see those elements as bothersome and instead both endorsed the film and cast aspersions on those who found it antagonistic to Christian faith.

CT gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars. Phil Cooke mocked those who found it bothersome.  Tony Jones predictably called it "an an eminently biblical film".  Even conservative MovieGuide opined about the film "a strong biblical, moral worldview with strong redemptive elements extolling justice, mercy, love, and faith plus a couple scenes of forgiveness."  In short, there was a significant plea to "lighten up" and be thankful that the great Biblical epic was back in fashion.  This video serves as an example of the media blitz by Christian leaders to sell the film to Christian audiences.


NOAH FEATURETTE with Quotes from Cooke Pictures on Vimeo.

We were told that it's just a movie and since Genesis 6-9 is so short a lot of embellishment was necessary.   True enough, but what if those embellishments turn the heart of the story on its head?   We are not talking about a scene in "Jesus of Nazareth" where Franco Zeffirelli has Jesus tell the story of the prodigal son out of sequence for dramatic effect.   Someone said that what was done with Noah was the equivalent of having Jesus portrayed as an Olympic skater under the justification that the text said he walked on water.  Or worse portraying Paul as a Nazi  because he lamented that his Jewish kin did not recognize Christ.

I agree with Dr Mattson on this one point.  "The scandal is this: of all the Christian leaders who went to great lengths to endorse this movie (for whatever reasons: “it’s a conversation starter,” “at least Hollywood is doing something on the Bible,” etc.), and all of the Christian leaders who panned it for “not following the Bible”…Not one of them could identify a blatantly Gnostic subversion of the biblical story when it was right in front of their faces."

I consider myself to be a little above average when it comes to recognizing ideas that coincide with ancient heresies.   I admit I did not know enough about Gnostic ideas or Kaballah to make the connections Dr. Mattson did.  But the glowing light from the skin of the serpent should have sent off alarm bells for virtually anyone with an understanding of the book of Genesis, chapters 1-11.  The fact that almost none of the reviews even mentioned it and the positive reviews ignored the implications is really troubling and sad.

Dr. Mattson closed his review with the following:

"Some readers may think I'm being hard on people for not noticing the Gnosticism at the heart of this film. I am not expecting rank-and-file viewers to notice these things. I would expect exactly what we've seen: head-scratching confusion. I've got a whole different standard for Christian leaders: college and seminary professors, pastors, and Ph.Ds. If a serpent skin wrapped around the arm of a godly Bible character doesn't set off any alarms... I don't know what to say."

I guess that pretty much sums it up for me too.