Simply a work of “Ark”

Noah 2014 is one movie that feels wrong but looks right. It’s power lies in it’s visual appeal. Even though it has mashed up facts, you feel the sense of a greater power at work through various scenes like the sudden growth of a forest to provide wood for the ark, the animals being drawn to the ark, the calm manner in which the animals co-exist alongside one another etc. The power of God is vastly highlighted through the forces of nature in the film because the voice of God is never heard, not once.

 Noah (2014) may rock the boat 

Noah 2014 will take its place as one among many controversial films made on a popular biblical character. While Christians will take offence to any medium that portrays the Bible in any other way than is stated, it must be remembered that films are made for entertaining the masses and capturing their attention. Even when based on a true story, a film will always use a certain degree of creative license and thus must ALWAYS be taken as a work of fiction and be viewed as such. Movies while made with a certain degree of propaganda cannot change people’s viewpoints. Change comes from a person not a medium. Movies simply present one viewpoint and ask people to make up their minds.

Christians might argue that making such movies portray Christianity in the wrong light. They would say that non-believers are unaware of what really went down and might believe the wrong thing. Yes while I agree that we are all swayed by “herd mentality” I must also point out that any person who is REALLY interested in Christianity will refer to the main source/ Bible after watching a movie based on a biblical figure. A person, who chooses to believe everything he sees in a movie blindly, does so gullibly and even then it is his choice. But I am raised to believe that people are cleverer than we give them credit for. When it comes to any tale around the Bible, sometimes making the movie controversial is a good thing. Because if anything it will invite non-believers to seek the main source (Bible) and check up on the facts, while it will motivate believers to re-visit the Bible in order to better defend the truth.

Let the truth rain down!

Noah 2014 has drawn bits and pieces from the real account of Noah, but has woven in so many fabricated elements that it becomes a wee-bit difficult to separate fact from fiction.

• Noah & God didn’t play Hide & Seek

Noah received clear cut directions from God on the upcoming flood. God was precise to even make him jot down measurements of the ark. Noah was also well aware of his family’s part in the grander scheme of things and knew that he and his family were meant to survive the flood and continue the line of humanity. So no he did not think his family was unworthy of stepping into the ark. Neither did he try to murder any of his sons (plural) children, boy or girl. Infanticide was not his cup of tea.

• Speaking of tea, no tea-party for Noah. Methuselah didn’t figure in the story of the flood

Although Methuselah was Noah’s grandfather, Noah didn’t receive any aid from him in understanding what God wanted from him. But I did the math and found out something interesting. Methuselah was 969 when he died and Noah would be 600 at that time. Noah was also 600 when he entered the ark. So although he wasn’t a part of the story, Methuselah could well have died during the time period when the flood began, since the time period within which he died and the time period within which the flood commenced coincide with each other. Noah 2014 got this part right

• It was floody not bloody. Tubal Cain and Noah were not enemies

To everyone but Noah and his family, the flood was more of a “surprise surprise”. While it is true that Tubal Cain descended from the line of Cain and Noah from the line of Seth, the families of both lines were not at war with each other. However fun fact. Both Tubal Cain and Noah had fathers named Lamech. Even their grandfathers had similar sounding names. While the grandfather of Tubal Cain was Methushael, the grandfather of Noah was Methuselah. Lamech the father of Tubal Cain was responsible for killing an armed man who attacked him and said the curse of Cain would visit him seventy seven times but it is never detailed out as to who that man was. Filmmakers of Noah probably used this piece of information to make it look like Young Tubal Cain (not the father of Tubal Cain) killed an unnamed man (who was actually Noah’s father in the movie). And the seventy seven times curse was the flood. In reality Noah’s father died a natural death at the age of 777 and was not murdered. If Tubal Cain or any of his descendants were alive and even if their paths crossed Noah and his family, they didn’t have any idea that a flood was coming and certainly didn’t appear as an army trying to survive the flood by boarding the ark. Tubal Cain also did not manage to play sneak by way of leak aboard the ark, because the ark was on heavenly lock-down.

• God did not have a beef with meat eaters

Being a chicken lover I felt terrible watching those scenes in Noah 2014 which made it look like all non-vegetarians were going to hell! I mean c’mon!!!!! While it is true that before the incident of the flood people survived on fruit and grain, men were punished for their evil thoughts and violent deeds which probably didn’t include non-vegetarianism. Animal killing existed at that time as it must be remembered that animals were used as sacrifices to God (so it definitely involved killing them).  Drinking the blood of animals was a no-no. Torturing them was a no-no. But not eating them once drained of blood. Immediately after the flood, God allowed Noah the right to consume animal flesh but not the blood of the animal or any animal with blood still in it because the blood had life. So you can eat all the chicken you want and rest assured that God is not judging you unless you decide to play vampire. If you want to play vampire however, going shiny is a very in-thing now.

• No fallen angels helped raise up the ark

There were no “Watchers” in the Biblical version. The “Watchers” in the movie describe themselves as fallen angels who were on the side of humans and provided them aid after their fall from grace. But nothing can be further from the truth. Fallen angels are the angels who fell from grace with Adam and Eve and were the agents of Lucifer who wanted to seize heavenly power for themselves. They are the natural enemies of man and look for ways to draw them away from God. So no they did not shelter the descendants of Cain and the last thing a fallen angel would do is save humanity by helping Noah build an ark. If Noah and his family did receive help from God, it would be from angels of God, the ones that don’t have to be “recalled to heaven” through “Star Trek beam up light jets” because they already kinda live there. P.S.-Fallen angels would also not go up but down.

• Ham & Japheth were not single and ready to mingle

In the Bible, God commanded Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives to enter the ark which meant all three sons of Noah were married. Ham did not detest his father for not letting him have a wife because guess what? He already had a wife! And Japheth was much older than depicted in Noah when they all boarded the ark. Noah and his family probably belonged to a much larger community and were simply singled out for this purpose to carry out God’s work. There were most certainly plenty of girls of marriageable age to go around for the boys to choose from. Ila (if that was the name of Shem’s real wife) was added in as a character in Noah to provide an extra subplot to the main story (Shem had a wife so that was right, but Ila’s version of events in Noah never happened). The filmmakers were also posing the question of how Noah and his family were expected to continue the reign of mankind when they were the last to survive. While the film did this through Ila and her twin daughters, in the actual account, the 3 wives of Noah’s children would bear them children who would obviously marry each other to continue the lines.

• Oh Baby, I’m good!

We aren’t given the name of Shem’s wife. But we do know that she wasn’t barren and needed no miracle to take place for her to pop out babies.

• Just shut it!

In the biblical version, God shut Noah and his family inside the Ark, not Noah as depicted in the film.

• It’s about time!

In reality it rained for a total of 40 days and took approximately 150 days for the water to start going down. But by the time Noah and his family exited the ark, a full year had passed not merely 9 months as indicated in Noah (2014).

• The raven was MIA

According to the biblical version, when Noah sent out the raven (not Japheth in Noah 2014), it never came back to the boat but flew around till the waters receded. The dove didn’t have any luck the first time either and it returned to the boat. It came back the second time with an olive branch and didn’t return the third time since it found land.

• But it’s no sacrifice!

Because they portrayed Noah as a man who abhorred animal killing and gave every meat-eating lover the evil squinty eye in Noah 2014, filmmakers omitted out the animal sacrifice that Noah made to God after the flood ended. This sacrifice resulted in God being pleased and making a covenant with Noah saying that he would never again destroy the whole world by flood and as a sign that he meant it, he placed a rainbow in the sky.

• Noah got high on the grape wine

Fact. Noah did get drunk. However it was accidental not incidental. Noah 2014 shows Noah drinking his way into a stupor since he feels guilty with his decision of letting his family live after the flood, when in reality Noah and his family happily docked on dry land and then went about trying to cultivate the land. Noah was the first man to have planted a vineyard and got drunk accidentally after having too much wine to drink (how many alcoholic first timers have gone through this?). He was inside a tent NOT cave and that’s where he took off his clothes.

• Ham never left the nest

While the film was right in showing Ham being the first to discover the nakedness of his father in a cave (rightly it should have been a tent), he is then shown leaving his family to find his own way. In the actual account, Ham was the first one to discover his father’s nakedness and tell his brothers about it. Shem & Japheth averted their eyes and walking backwards drew a cloth around Noah. Then they exited the tent. It isn’t certain why Noah was enraged when he woke up and discovered “what Ham had done”, but we imagine Ham must have gossiped about it, following which Noah curses Canaan, the son of Ham. We don’t know why he chose to curse Canaan either but personally I feel that he thought it would hurt Ham more if his son and not he bore the curse. Sins of the father attributed to the son. I think the filmmakers used this incident to set up Ham as a secondary villain to his father in Noah 2014

• This is Hiss-terical!

Adam and his descendants never used a shiny snakeskin to pass down their history. Anything snake-related was pretty much their enemy since it was the snake in the garden of Eden that led to their downfall. I think the reason the snakeskin was used in the movie was because the snake of Eden was the starting point for man’s thirst for knowledge so knowledge of what happened in the past was passed down through the snake-skin.

• God bless you!

The final scene of Noah 2014 showed Noah passing on the family history through the snakeskin and telling Ila to be fruitful and multiply. In reality, it was God (not Noah) who delivered his blessings to Noah and his entire family asking them to be fruitful and multiply, saying that from their line, the world would slowly be formed again.

Noah 2014 may not float your boat and DEFINITELY should not be believed over the real account in the Bible, but at the end of the day it’s still worth the watch.

Maybe you could save it for a rainy day.

Picture credits:

http://truthwithsnares.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/noah-film-still-noahs-ark-darren-aronofsky1.jpg