Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Noah by Darren Aronofsky Gnosticism and Kabbalah in Aronofsky’S Noah
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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Noah by Darren Aronofsky Gnosticism and Kabbalah in Aronofsky’s Noah. After seeing Noah , I think some reviewers who gave strongly positive reviews of the film read their own theology into the story where it didn’t actually exist, resulting in confusingly divergent reviews from people I respect. My assessment is that the movie is mediocre at best and the theology is terrible, but if you intend to see it, there’s a review by Brian Mattson you should read that will help you interpret the ideas advocated in the film. Dr. Mattson makes a compelling case that the creator of Noah , Darren Aronofsky, didn’t take liberties with the Bible story: Aronofsky hasn’t “taken liberties” with anything. The Bible is not his text . Darren Aronofsky has produced a retelling of the Noah story without reference to the Bible at all. This was not, as he claimed, just a storied tradition of run-of-the-mill Jewish “Midrash.” This was a thoroughly pagan retelling of the Noah story direct from Kabbalist and Gnostic sources. It’s worth reading the entire article to see the specific examples he gives of the parallels between the ideas in Noah and Gnosticism/Kabbalah. Here’s one: The world of Aronofsky’s Noah is a thoroughly Gnostic one: a graded universe of “higher” and “lower.” The “spiritual” is good, and way, way, way “up there” where the ineffable, unspeaking god dwells, and the “material” is bad, and way, way down here where our spirits are encased in material flesh. This is not only true of the fallen sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, but of fallen angels, who are explicitly depicted as being spirits trapped inside a material “body” of cooled molten lava. Admittedly, they make pretty nifty movie characters, but they’re also notorious in Gnostic speculation. Gnostics call them Archons , lesser divine beings or angels who aid “The Creator” in forming the visible universe. And Kabbalah has a pantheon of angelic beings of its own all up and down the ladder of “divine being.” And fallen angels are never totally fallen in this brand of mysticism. To quote the Zohar again, a central Kabbalah text: “All things of which this world consists, the spirit as well as the body, will return to the principle and the root from which they came.” Funny. That’s exactly what happens to Aronofsky’s Lava Monsters. They redeem themselves, shed their outer material skin, and fly back to the heavens. Incidentally, I noticed that in the film, as the family is traveling through a desolate wasteland, Shem asks his father: “Is this a Zohar mine?” Yep. That’s the name of Kabbalah’s sacred text. The entire movie is, figuratively, a “Zohar” mine. Dr. Mattson’s understanding of Noah certainly explains the oddity of Tubal-Cain (the villain) trying to convince Noah’s son that since he’s made in the image of God, he ought to follow the biblical command of God to “fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over” the creatures in it. Why would Aronofsky have the villain advocate God’s command from Genesis 1? (Some spoilers ahead): [W]hen Gnostics speak about “The Creator” they are not talking about God . Oh, here in an affluent world living off the fruits of Christendom the term “Creator” generally denotes the true and living God. But here’s a little “Gnosticism 101” for you: the Creator of the material world is an ignorant, arrogant, jealous, exclusive, violent, low-level, bastard son of a low level deity. He’s responsible for creating the “unspiritual” world of flesh and matter, and he himself is so ignorant of the spiritual world he fancies himself the “only God” and demands absolute obedience. They generally call him “Yahweh.” Or other names, too (Ialdabaoth, for example). This Creator tries to keep Adam and Eve from the true knowledge of the divine and, when they disobey, flies into a rage and boots them from the garden. In other words, in case you’re losing the plot here: The serpent was right all along . The world of Gnostic mysticism is bewildering with a myriad of varieties. But, generally speaking, they hold in common that the serpent is “Sophia,” “Mother,” or “Wisdom.” The serpent represents the true divine, and the claims of “The Creator” are false. Many reviewers thought Noah’s change into a homicidal maniac on the ark, wanting to kill his son’s two newborn daughters, was a weird plot twist. It isn’t weird at all. In the Director’s view, Noah is worshiping a false, homicidal maniac of a god. The more faithful and “godly” Noah becomes, the more homicidal he becomes. He is becoming every bit the “image of god” that the “evil” guy who keeps talking about the “image of god,” Tubal- Cain, is. But Noah fails “The Creator.” He cannot wipe out all life like his god wants him to do. “When I looked at those two girls, my heart was filled with nothing but love ,“ he says. Noah now has something “The Creator” doesn’t. Love. And Mercy. But where did he get it? And why now? In the immediately preceding scene Noah killed Tubal-Cain and recovered the snakeskin relic : “Sophia,” “Wisdom,” the true light of the divine. I think Dr. Mattson is really on to something here, and I encourage you to read the rest of his review. Watch Live: Darren Aronofsky Discusses “Noah” and Climate Change. Aronofsky’s “Noah” embraces a brand of faith-based environmentalism that’s increasingly popular with young religious believers. Chris Mooney. For a brief moment in Darren Aronofsky’s hit religious epic film Noah , we see the great Flood from space. From that vantage point, it looks much like an atmospheric event of the sort that a NASA satellite might photograph, so we can all share it on Facebook. So what does biblical cataclysm look like from orbit? Beautifully, and yet terrifyingly, the entire Earth appears to be draped in a quilt of hurricanes, each cyclone nestled alongside the next. “There is a huge statement in the film, a strong message about the coming flood from global warming,” Aronofsky told The New Yorker in an extensive profile. The film also contains a depiction of the Big Bang (something doubted by 51 percent of Americans, according to a recent survey), fins-to-limbs evolution, and the very clear implication that the biblical “days” of the creation were only metaphorical days, not literal, 24- hour ones. “Noah” and the Nexus of Faith and Environmentalism. April 23, 2014, 3-4 p.m. EDT. The Center for American Progress, 1333 H St., NW, 10th Fl., Washington, DC 20005. RSVP here (space is extremely limited); a live web stream will be available here on the day of the event. In other words, you might say Noah is waving the red cape in front of fundamentalist Christianity. No wonder, as Mother Jones ‘ Asawin Suebsaeng puts it, the film has inspired a “flood of religious freak-outs.” But the freak-outs shouldn’t get all the attention: No matter what the Christian right may say, Noah is a deeply religious and spiritual film containing an authentic moral message. And that message feeds strongly into a vital and growing religious tradition of our time, one that especially appeals to younger believers: faith-based environmentalism, or what is sometimes called “creation care,” which uses biblically based moral imperatives to impel conservation and stewardship. (Aronofsky and his Noah cowriter Ari Handel will be attending an event later today at the Center for American Progress to discuss just this aspect of the film; details at right. You can watch a live stream right here beginning at 3 p.m. EDT today.) Certainly, you couldn’t fairly call Noah an irreligious movie. Aronofsky himself, whose notable past films include The Wrestler and Black Swan , is a “not very religious” Jew who has said of his spirituality, “I think it’s always changing. I think I definitely believe.” As for the film itself: Aronofsky and Handel relied heavily on not just the text of the Bible (where the story of Noah encompasses roughly four chapters of the book of Genesis), but also Jewish Midrash, ancient explications of religious texts. The result is creative, sometimes idiosyncratic, heavily influenced by Jewish theology, and above all, deeply environmental. In other words, it’s a film that may tick off people who are very rigid in their biblical literalism, but for other believers, it’s an environmental epic that can be resonant indeed. Whose “dominion”? Aronofsky has called Noah the “first environmentalist.” The film goes further: It actively interprets the Bible in favor of those who argue that the book of Genesis requires us all to be good “stewards” of the creation—and in strong opposition to those who read its language about mankind having “dominion…over all the earth, and over every creeping thing” as mainly implying that all this exists for us. (Who holds such a view? Well, here’s Rick Santorum: “Man is here to use the resources, and use them wisely, to care for the Earth, to be a steward the Earth, but we’re not here to serve the Earth, the Earth is not the objective. Man is the objective.”) Noah tells us, bluntly, that that’s what the bad guys think. Those bad guys in the film are led by a figure named Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone), who very early on declares, “Damned if I don’t take what I want.” Tubal-Cain represents the line of Cain (Adam’s son, who killed his brother Abel) and thus embodies the biblical “wickedness” of mankind just before the Flood; in the film, that wickedness is embodied, in Tolkienlike fashion, as industrialization, environmental despoilment, and pollution.