Darren Aronofksy’s Noah was a really good movie. Nobody really talks about it anymore, though. It made bank at the box office, got great reviews, and generated tons and tons of controversy for presenting a decidedly non-Evangelical interpretation of the Book of Genesis. Even so, it faded from the limelight quite a lot.
But what I want to talk about with Noah is its Creation Scene, one of the most visually stunning sequences in any film in the 2010s. If you liked Aronofsky’s other heavily symbolic and religious The Fountain, this scene will be perfect for you. It works amazingly in-context as part of the moral drama of Noah and his family, but it also works completely separately as a standalone scene:
Amazing stuff, ain’t it?
The scene really speaks for itself. It tells the story of the first three chapters of the Book of Genesis, using trippy timelapse visuals to show Creation at work. The descent of man into the sinful world has become life for Noah and his family; here’s how it happened.
The movie takes Noah’s allegorical tale and meshes it with both recorded human history and other Biblical stories and it’s so cool. (Also, definitely part of the controversy behind this film for Evangelical groups.) But it most certainly represents director Aronofsky’s beliefs about Creation, shown off in the grandest way possible.
—
Check out another 2014 movie that did wonders with visual storytelling: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
It was pretty alright.
Yeah it was OK
When it came out, I lumped it in with New Gritty Beowulf and its ilk as a movie never to see. Oops. I’m always impressed, though, by the “Creation” clip
It’s a neat movie. I would say that it is pretty gritty though. Lots of people die. 99.9% of the characters in the story die
only Noah’s Foot survives
Noah: Directed by Quentin Tarantino