Noah, And The Problem With Bible Movies

Depending on who you ask, the Bible is the most popular book in history. Exact sales figures are impossible to pin down, but it’s fair to estimate reader numbers put Fifty Shades Of Grey to shame (and it’s more sadistic by far, but that’s neither here nor there). So it’s little surprise then that for as long as movies have existed, so too have movies adapted from the Bible. Considering that the new Russell Crowe special effects extravaganza Noah is directed by Darren Aronofsky — the man who made Requiem for a Dream (2000) and Black Swan (2010) — it goes without saying that it’s perhaps not an entirely faithful adaptation of Genesis chapters 6-9. Distributor Paramount have even gone so far as to include a disclaimer in the film’s advertising to appease conservative audiences.

While the Christian-baiting is ridiculous and didn’t please Aronofsky, it’s not hard to recognise the studio’s motivation behind the “gesture of good will toward religious groups”: they need the money that religious audiences can provide. Low budget, independently-financed religious films have become frequently reliable money-makers at the American box office, and audiences that have spurred on recent hits Son of God and God’s Not Dead will likely play at least some small part in determining whether the Hollywood moguls make back their ark-sized $130 million budget.

Godless Hollywood

Skepticism, at least in the eyes of the religious, is probably justified. It’s not like Hollywood has a reputation these days of being Jesus-friendly. It’s even been statistically proven that producer Harvey Weinstein and actor Meryl Streep get thanked at the Academy Awards more than God (this ain’t the Grammys). A trio of epics including The Robe (1953), The Ten Commandments (1956), and Ben-Hur (1959, adapted from Lew Wallace’s’s 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ and not the Bible as incorrectly assumed) were the last times biblically-themed films were nominated for — or, in the latter’s case, won — the Academy’s ‘Best Picture’ award (although Terrence Malick’s 2011 epic The Tree of Life comes close, I guess).

Furthermore, the highest-grossing film of its kind, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) was independently financed. The production’s entire $30 million budget was footed by Gibson, presumably because nobody wanted to pay for a film spoken entirely in a dead language and which from early indications was going to be anti-Semitic. The film was a giant success and likely spurred on Mark Burnett’s hugely successful television miniseries The Bible and its Barack Obama/Satan lookalike (!!!), as well as Ridley Scott’s upcoming Exodus, which features a pigment-altered Joel Edgerton playing an Egyptian pharaoh.

It’s all certainly a change of pace from Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), which took its controversial re-evaluation of Jesus Christ’s life not from the Bible, but from Nikos Kazantzakis’ titular 1953 novel. Like Noah, it too had a disclaimer claiming that it “is not based upon the Gospels, but upon this fictional exploration of the eternal spiritual conflict”, but that didn’t appease those who felt their religious beliefs being affronted by Scorsese and Hollywood. There were protests and, despite initial arthouse box office success, it proved to be one of his lowest-grossing films. Still, it was a creative comeback for Scorsese — his next film would be Goodfellas (1990) — and he was rewarded with an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Director’ for his efforts. To this day, I consider the film a greater examination of faith and humanity than anything by Kirk Cameron.

Messing around with ‘the greatest story ever told’

It’s little wonder then that Noah’s distributors are in a minor mode of damage control. The film truly needs to be a bible-sized success to recoup its budget (which is something Russell Crowe has struggled to do as a lead actor since 2010’s Robin Hood). It will likely come down to each person’s own interpretation as to whether Noah uses the story of the ark as a jumping off point for a film about something entirely different than God or not, especially since critics have been mostly kept in the dark, not allowed to see the film before the public does this weekend. Crowe has personally invited Pope Francis to watch it because he thinks he would “find it fascinating”, and a papal endorsement could surely get the religious masses to buy tickets even with Bible scholars calling it “anti-human, pro-environmental polemic.”

Of course, it all begs the question of what makes the Bible so beyond narrative reproach. It’s easy to forget in this day and age of protracted Young Adult franchises, where not a single scene from the book can be left in the screenwriter’s waste basket, but sometimes novels have to be condensed and adapted for the big screen, even ones supposedly based on true events. I guess when your story has been labelled ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told‘, people think you probably shouldn’t tinker with the words too much. Then again, Noah and his ark have already been the subject of a less than historically accurate rendition in the form of Evan Almighty (2007), and I don’t recall Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston being around in the time of The Prince of Egypt (1998).

Much like Scorsese’s 1988 film — which to this day remains banned in several countries — Noah too has been blacklisted, with Indonesia just becoming the fourth nation to ban the movie after Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates due to issues involving the portrayal of a prophet. But whether or not the film is entirely faithful to the book of God likely won’t matter to the average moviegoer who just wants to see Crowe, Emma Watson and Anthony Hopkins play dress-ups surrounded by CGI animals. Perhaps rather than worrying about what makes a faithful ‘bible story’, we should use these tales as inspiration for exploring issues of greater modern relevance. I mean, if God does exist, don’t you think he’d be a bit sick of the same ol’ stories?

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Noah opens in cinemas nationally today.

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Glenn Dunks is a freelance writer and film critic from Melbourne, and currently based in New York City. His work has been seen online (Onya Magazine, Quickflix), in print (The Big Issue, Metro Magazine, Intellect Books Ltd’s World Film Locations: Melbourne), as well as heard on Joy 94.9.