Recently, members of the Techcitement Crew were subjected to the movie Noah by Darren Aronofsky via the Ludovico Technique. Thanks, Dr. Brodsky! The movie based around the Biblical flood stars Russell Crowe as a bearded, rage-filled, and shouting Noah.
Worst selfie ever.
Some of us found the movie to be a tired, slightly derivative work, wandering off the original Sumerian source material from the 17th century BC after the floods and following the great melts at the end of the last Ice Age that inundated the Persian Gulf, feeling that Noah lacked a more dynamic portrayal of Ziusudra even if the sneaky references to Enlil are appreciated; the special effects are nice though.
But on the whole, we were surprised. For a movie set in or around 2,349 BC, it had a surprising amount of technology. Much of it was unusual to the period, but tech is tech, right? Unless, of course, the whole movie is set … in the future!?
That would certainly tie into exhausted mines, blasted land, food shortages and dying cities.
Waking up on Sunday morning is just the worst.
First off, gunpowder. In the movie, we see Tubal-cain (played by Ray Winstone, full of hairy rage and SHOUTING!) using a mortar to launch a flare and later on, rockets. Whilst Tubal-cain was known in the Biblical tradition for metallurgy, iron and bronze in particular, “spiced and refined the Cain’s craft to make weapons for murderers … and first of all invented the art of working brass,” it would have definitely have been noted if he was also supposed to have invented gunpowder.
A mix of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate was first used in China, in the ninth century AD while alchemists were searching for eternal life. The combination was originally called fire medicine. Even in the Biblical verses, naptha, a general term used to describe the explosive elements of the liquid hydrocarbons in petroleum, wasn’t even mentioned until 2 Maccabees, which is set in 161 BC.
WRay Winstone’s got a shooter!
Gunpowder pales in comparison to the movie’s use of suspended animation. To get around the whole “why didn’t all the animals eat each other on The Ark?” question, the filmmakers had Noah and his family subdue them all with burning herbs, which seemed to not affect humans. To date, suspended animation lies heavily in the world of science fiction and is heavily tied to cryonics. Attempts using hydrogen sulfide have worked with mice for up to six hours, in studies in 2005, but more recent studies with larger mammals have failed to yield results. Additionally, hydrogen sulfide is generally toxic and explosive in sufficient quantities in air. The chemical may have caused the Permian-Triassic extinction event.
Sleepy-Time Tea works wonders!
To pick on the movie’s slippery stance on science and technology on a smaller level, let’s talk about haircuts. Throughout the latter half of the movie, Russell Crowe maintains a very tidy buzz cut. Well, scissors were first invented in Egypt or Sumeria, sometime between 2,000BC and 1,500 BC. That’s at least 500 years after the time of Noah.
Hairdressing aside, the entirety of the costume design is deliberately forced anachronism. Michael Wilkinson had previously worked on 300, so clearly he already had a poor grasp of period-specific clothing, including having Tubal-cain wearing a modern welding mask and steel-plate armor. However, iron and steel wasn’t developed as armour or weaponry until 800 BC in Assyria.
Because screw realism, that’s why.
To break up the uniformity of rough, hand-loomed fabrics, Wilkinson worked with textile artist Matt Reitsma. Reitsma used a wide variety of modern textile effects and cuts in the costumes that he worked on.
Michael had chosen a considerable amount of synthetic/vinyl fabrics he wanted to look like worn tarpaulins and plastic packaging that had been foraged for and unearthed from the past that was then fashioned into protective clothing. To this end, knowing that age and time is random, the effect I used to deal with that was using sheer washes of vinyl paints, which were often while wet spritzed with alcohol to created degraded weathered effects.
Overall, Aronofsky’s vision is seemingly one set more in a far future (not surprisingly given his love of metaphysical hard sci-fi in The Fountain) than in the long-ago and faraway, one where the cities have crumbled and mankind is resorting to iron-age tools and weapons to scrabble in the dirt. If so, the director may have slyly made a post-apocalyptic tale with Biblical connections to warn us about replaying history (depending on whether or not you belief in that particular version of history). The question is, which shouting loon do you want to save humanity?
Funny from a summary I read online it described the movie as taking place in a post-Apocalyptic future and the design would seem to back this up…but mostly it just looks grey and murky, like a lot of Hollywood productions these days.
Yeah, this is quite precisely why I was too busy washing my hair to see the film. Well-put!