Rodgers > Blog Post: Reflection on Noah

A couple weeks ago, our class went to see a new film titled Noah, which was an artistic representation of the biblical story found in Genesis 5. The film has been the topic of a lot of controversy recently, and it was exciting to go and be able to analyze it as an independent thinker, rather than having a viewpoint based on other people's opinions. I did read an informative article beforehand in order to give some context to the storyline and filmmaker, and found that the director, Darren Aronofsky, is a self proclaimed atheist who boasted that his film was the most unbiblical, biblical film created. With this information, I went in to the film with no expectations conscerning accuracy, and came out quite surprised. It's true that the film did not hold true to pure biblical truth (there was a lot of inclusion from the non canonized texts the Book of Enoch), but I was blown away by the beauty that still shone through. The filming of nature and the portrayal of God's creation was strikingly sound, and really filled me with visions of what a pre-flood world would have looked like. Although I cringed at the scenes where Noah took on a psychotic persona, I actually felt drawn by the truth of it at the same time. I feel like it is easy to paint biblical Father's as being flawless, when in reality they were human just like we are. Noah's deranged actions reminded me that we are all fallen, and God's goodness is not defined by what a human does or says. I was reminded of a quote by C.S. Lewis: "A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell." The film does not define who God is- truth is truth no matter what. In looking through the flaws, I was able to see beauty and truth even still. Id Aronofsky's purpose was to distort the view of God, I do not believe that he succeeded,