Darren Aronofsky's Noah – Chapter 1
Darren Aronofsky's Noah – Chapter 1
Creation, the Fall, and a traumatic coming-of-age in the film's opening prologue.
Intro | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22
In the weeks leading up to the release of Noah, director Darren Aronofsky and his co-writer Ari Handel said they wanted to challenge the viewer’s expectations—and their film does that right from its opening frames, which confront the viewer with strange images, jarring music, and a series of title cards that mix the biblical narrative with post-biblical legends and even some elements that are outright fantastical.
The early version of the screenplay, and the graphic novel that was based on it, both have an absolutely minimal prologue in which Eve’s hand plucks the forbidden fruit, Cain kills Abel, and violence spreads out over the earth—culminating in a quotation of Genesis 6:5, which says the Creator saw the wickedness of man and it grieved him to his heart. The early screenplay and the graphic novel then proceed to start the story of Noah himself when he is an adult with a wife and three children.
The film, however, never directly cites any Bible verses, and it extends the prologue by depicting a scene from Noah’s childhood in which he witnesses the death of his father, the latter of whom was not in any of the earlier versions of this story.
In the beginning there was nothing...
Sources. The first words of the book of Genesis are usually translated into English as: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
The film’s prologue does not describe the act of creation per se, but it does smuggle in a concept that is not spelled out in the text: namely the idea that God created the universe ex nihilo, or “out of nothing.”
While many later Jewish and Christian theologians have embraced the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, there is some debate among scholars as to whether the author of Genesis had that idea in mind. Some have argued that, as far as Genesis is concerned, God created the universe out of chaotic elements—God brought order to a chaos that was already there—but where those elements came from remains an open question.
Controversy. Some people objected to this opening title card simply because it deviates from the words of the Bible, others because—like the rest of the film—it avoids using the word “God.”
Some people find significance in the fact that the first words of the Bible are “In the beginning God,” so the fact that the film did not explicitly point to God from its opening frames was problematic for them.
Music. The track that plays over Chapter 1 in its entirety is called ‘In the Beginning, There Was Nothing,’ as per this opening title card.
Temptation led to sin...
Sources. The brief glimpse of the serpent before this title card, and the brief glimpse of a hand taking the forbidden fruit after this title card, come from Genesis 3. We will see this all again, at greater length, when Noah tells the story of Creation and the Fall to his family in Chapter 15.
Cast out of Eden, Adam and Eve had three sons:
Cain, Abel and Seth.
Sources. Genesis 4 begins with the birth of Cain and Abel, and ends with the birth of Seth after Cain kills Abel and goes into exile.
Genesis 5:4 says Adam had “other sons and daughters” after the birth of Seth, but the film never mentions those other children explicitly—though presumably Adam and Eve must have had them, if only so that Cain and Seth could have wives and families of their own.
The Bible doesn’t say exactly how Cain killed Abel, but the Book of Jubilees, which dates to the 2nd century BC, says Cain used a stone. It also says that, in a moment of poetic justice, Cain himself died when the stones of his house fell on him some years later (Jubilees 4.31-32).
Images. The shot that follows this title card—a close-up of Cain’s hand holding a rock in the air—will be repeated several times throughout the film, as will the high-pitched sound that accompanies it.
The high-pitched sound that accompanies this shot is reminiscent of the high-pitched sound that accompanied some of the hallucinations in Pi.
Movies. Cain is played by Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, who went on to play the apostle Thomas in A.D. The Bible Continues (2015).
Themes. According to Genesis 4, Cain killed Abel because God “looked with favour” on Abel’s sacrifice of animals and not on Cain’s sacrifice of plants. But the film does not tell us why Cain killed Abel, possibly because the film has a strong “animal rights” sensibility and it would complicate matters significantly if the innocent victim of this murder was someone who killed animals and did so with God’s approval.
The “animal rights” theme will be explored more in future chapters. For now, suffice it to say that the biblical God did not permit the eating of meat until after the Flood (Genesis 9:2-3), but this ban on meat-eating co-existed with the sacrifices performed by Abel and Noah; animals could not be killed for food, but they could apparently be killed for sacrifices. The film erases any possible discrepancy here by suggesting that violence of any kind against animals was akin to violence against humans, at least before the Flood. And so the film never mentions Abel’s sacrifice.
Abel’s sacrifice is one of two that are approved by God in the biblical text but omitted from the film. The other, if it had been included in the film, would have appeared in Chapter 21.
Cain killed Abel and fled to the East, where he was sheltered by a band of fallen angels:
The Watchers.
These Watchers helped Cain’s descendants build a great industrial civilization.
Sources. Cain’s flight to the East is described in Genesis 4:16.
The Watchers are loosely based on the “sons of God” who mated with human women and produced gigantic offspring in Genesis 6:1-4. This will be discussed in more detail during the flashback sequence in Chapter 5.
The name “Watchers” comes from the pseudepigraphal Book of Enoch, thought to have been written around the 3rd century BC. It describes how the Watchers introduced various kinds of technology to the early humans.
The Book of Enoch also mentions Cain’s descendants. It does not link them to the Watchers specifically, but it does say that the spirit of Abel begged God to wipe them from the face of the earth (Enoch 22.7).
Cain’s cities spread wickedness, devouring the World.
Sources. Cain is, in fact, the first person who is described in the Bible as building a city, in Genesis 4:17.
Science. This is our first glimpse of the Earth and its spherical shape. It is doubtful that the ancient Hebrews envisioned the world this way; they seem to have assumed that the Earth was flat, for one thing, with pillars below and a canopy above to keep the waters of chaos out.
Note, also, that the Earth conquered by Cain’s cities has a single continent which looks remarkably similar to Pangaea, the supercontinent that began breaking up into the continents we know today around 175 million years ago. Modern humans are believed to have evolved only 200,000 years ago, so this is very much an anachronism, but it’s one example of how the film blurs the line—sometimes somewhat playfully—between science, myth, and fantasy.
Only the descendants of Seth defend and protect what is left of Creation.
Sources. Some interpreters, bothered by the moral or theological implications of angels mating with humans, have argued that the passage in Genesis 6:1-4 about “the sons of God” taking wives from “the daughters of men” is not a reference to inter-species sex, but is instead a reference to the virtuous descendants of Seth (“sons of God”) mating with the evil descendants of Cain (“daughters of men”).
While Noah clearly embraces the more mythic reading of this passage and makes fallen angels an active part of the story—more on that in Chapter 5—it also gives a nod to the other interpretation of this passage by making a sharp distinction between the evil of Cain’s descendants and the goodness of Seth’s descendants. The film also omits any reference to the other children of Adam and their descendants.
Today, the last of Seth’s line becomes a man.
Tradition. Noah is played in the scene that follows by Dakota Goyo, who turned 13 around the time this scene was filmed. (Filming in Iceland took place in July and August 2012; Goyo was born on August 22, 1999.) So the statement that Noah “becomes a man,” in conjunction with the ritual that his father is about to perform, has clear parallels to the bar mitzvah, the Jewish coming-of-age ritual that takes place when boys turn 13 and assume the religious responsibilities of adulthood.
LAMECH: From Adam to Seth, from Seth to Enosh, Enosh to Kenan, Kenan to Mahalalel, to my father, Methuselah, and to me. Today that birthright passes to you, Noah, my son.
Sources. Lamech is reciting the list of ancestors from Genesis 5—but he skips two of them! After Mahalalel, the next two names should be Jared and Enoch. The omission of these two names is all the more striking because Methuselah talks about his father Enoch in Chapter 6.
The gap occurs at the precise moment when the film cuts from a wide shot of Lamech and his son to a close-up of Noah’s face, so it’s tempting to think that the names were omitted due to a hasty edit—but the published screenplay also omits them, as does the official novelization.
To be fair, in the published screenplay and the novelization, Lamech does follow Mahalalel’s name with the words, “And so down to us the blessing passed...” So he seems to be acknowledging that he is skipping over some names. But he’s really skipping over only two.
The genealogy in Genesis 5 emphasizes that each of the men on that list, including Lamech, had other sons and daughters besides the ones who are mentioned. This would seem to suggest that there ought to be many descendants of Seth by now—many branches of the Seth family tree—but the film omits them all and says Noah is “the last of Seth’s line,” perhaps to draw a sharper distinction between the man who builds the Ark and the people who perish in the Flood.
Development. The exteriors for the first part of the film—and its conclusion, after the Flood waters have receded—were shot in Iceland.
In the Blu-Ray featurette ‘Iceland: Extreme Beauty,’ Aronofsky says Iceland was an ideal place to shoot the film because it has the newest, youngest terrain on our planet, and this was ideal for a story set shortly after the creation of the world. However, cinematographer Matthew Libatique notes that they had to avoid making the terrain look too beautiful, because part of the point of the film is that humans “exhausted” the world before the Flood.
Marton Csokas, the actor who plays Lamech, told The Wrap that, although he didn’t have any scenes with Russell Crowe, he did study “some of his physical mannerisms, since I was playing his father.”
LAMECH: The Creator made Adam in His image, and then placed the world in his care. This is your work now. Your responsibility. May you walk alongside the Creator in righteousness.
Sources. Genesis 1:26-27 says God created mankind—including both Adam and Eve—in his “image”. The kings of the ancient Near East often presented themselves as “images” of their gods, but the biblical text says all humans bear the “image” of the one God who made us all.
Genesis 6:9 says Noah was “a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.”
The snakeskin that Lamech wraps around his arm is ultimately based on a passage in Genesis 3:21 which says that God gave Adam and Eve “garments of skin” when he expelled them from Eden. Because no animals had died yet, many Jewish interpreters—going back at least to the author of 3 Baruch, a pseudepigraphal text that may have been written in the 2nd century AD—have supposed that God gave Adam and Eve the skin of the serpent, because serpents can shed their skin without dying.
While some interpreters have supposed that God gave Adam and Eve the snakeskin to remind them of their sin, others have marvelled at the paradox whereby the serpent that caused humanity’s downfall played an inadvertent role in restoring humanity’s dignity. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan and the Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer, both of which may date to the first millennium AD, refer to these skins as “garments of glory”.
Tradition. Lamech wraps the snakeskin around his arm in a manner that recalls the tefillin, i.e. the boxes containing verses from the Torah that observant Jews strap to their arms and foreheads while praying.
Development. In the published screenplay, the official novelization and Ila’s Story, the snakeskin begins to extend from Lamech’s finger as though it is about to wrap itself around Noah’s finger.
In the film, the close-up of the two fingers almost touching was originally going to have a visual effect that showed the snakeskin extending from Lamech’s finger. You can still see this in the international trailer that was released on November 14, 2013. But in the final film, the visual effect is modified so that the snakeskin now merely glows.
Themes. The opening dialogue from Lamech establishes the themes of stewardship and “righteousness,” which the film will go on to flesh out.
Controversy. Many Christians, unaware of the Jewish traditions about the “garments of skin,” reacted negatively to the snakeskin and imagined that the film was somehow a subversive Gnostic story that took the side of the tempter in Eden against the side of the Creator.
In a widely distributed blog post on March 31, 2014, theologian Brian Mattson argued that the film basically pits the Creator and the snakeskin against each other, and that it draws a sharp line between characters who believe in the Creator and characters who find “enlightenment” through the snakeskin. But Mattson’s argument overlooked the fact that the snakeskin glows for Lamech while he is telling his son to walk with the Creator.
LAMECH: So I say to you...
TUBAL-CAIN (offscreen): The Shrine of Seth!
LAMECH (to Noah): Men. Hide.
Themes. Lamech is interrupted, so we don’t know what he was going to say.
Noah will eventually perform this ritual with his family—including his wife, two of his sons, his daughter-in-law, and his infant granddaughters—after the Flood in Chapter 21, and on that occasion, he will say, “So I say to you, be fruitful and multiply…” It doesn’t seem likely that Lamech would have said anything like that to a 13-year-old boy in the absence of any potential mates, but you never know.
TUBAL-CAIN: We mine here. The ground is rich with tzohar.
LAMECH: This is the Creator’s land. What are you doing?
Sources. The word “tzohar” appears in Genesis 6:16, when God gives Noah instructions for building the Ark, and it is commonly interpreted to mean that Noah installed a window to allow light to come in from outside. Some rabbinic traditions, however, have imagined that the “tzohar” was a jewel containing primordial light from the first day of Creation.
The film takes this idea and runs with it, depicting “tzohar” as a mineral that plays a key part in antediluvian technology. Noah uses it for illumination, but it is also weaponized by Tubal-Cain and his men.
Tubal-Cain, the villain of the film, is mentioned at the end of a list of Cain’s descendants in Genesis 4:22. It describes him as one who “forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron,” hence the weapon he wields here. Interestingly, Tubal-Cain’s father was named Lamech, too.
Images. As the camera pulls back to reveal Tubal-Cain and his men, we can see two enslaved Watchers in the background, bound by chains. When Tubal-Cain and his men storm the Ark in Chapter 13, the Watchers will use similar chains to fight back and form a barrier around the Ark.
Themes. The dialogue—and the banners that are posted close to where Lamech and Noah were performing their ritual—seem to indicate that the descendants of Seth have been watching over a sort of sacred land preserve, similar perhaps to the protected wildernesses that some people now want to exploit for their natural resources (oil, etc.).
TUBAL-CAIN: The Creator? My mines run dry. My city withers and must be fed. And what has He done? He cursed us to struggle by the sweat of our brow to survive! Damned if I don’t do everything it takes to do just that. Damned if I don’t take what I want.
Sources. In Genesis 3:17-20, when God punishes Adam and Eve for eating the forbidden fruit, he curses the ground—saying it will produce “thorns and thistles”—and he says human beings will only be able to grow food “by the sweat of your brow” and through “painful toil.”
Genesis 5:29 says Lamech gave his son the name Noah (which means “comfort”) because he believed his son would “comfort us in the labour and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed.”
Themes. We will hear another version of Tubal-Cain’s self-justifying speech when we meet the character again in Chapter 9.
TUBAL-CAIN: This relic belongs to the descendants of Cain now. The line of Seth ends here. It is ours. Now dig!
Sources. Tubal-Cain kills Lamech in the film when Noah is still a boy. But the biblical Lamech actually lived long enough to see Noah’s children. If you follow the numbers given in the Masoretic version of Genesis 5 (i.e. the standard Hebrew text used by Bible translators), Lamech dies just five years before the Flood: he lives to be 777, and he dies when his son Noah is 595 and his grandsons Shem, Ham, and Japheth are in their 90s.
The Tubal-Cain of the film seems to be modeled after Nimrod, a warrior-king and builder of cities who lived shortly after the Flood (see Chapter 13). In one Jewish legend, Noah’s son Ham steals the “garments of skin” from Noah and passes them on to his own son Cush, who passes them on to his own son Nimrod. So the fact that Tubal-Cain possesses the stolen snakeskin before the Flood here may hark back to the legend about Nimrod possessing the stolen snakeskin after the Flood.
Development. The graphic novel has no scenes with Lamech, and no snakeskin. However, it does feature an early scene in which Tubal-Cain kills an animal that had been healed by Noah, and he takes its horn. That horn appears again later in the graphic novel, just as the snakeskin will here.
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Noah commentary chapters:
Intro | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22
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TV show recaps:
The Chosen | Prophet Joseph | The Bible | A.D. The Bible Continues | Of Kings and Prophets | History of the World, Part II
Movie scene guides:
Risen | The Young Messiah | Paul, Apostle of Christ | Mary Magdalene