RadixJournal - September 08, 2026


Aronofsky’s flawed but symbolically revealing Noah (2014)


Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

146.51

Word count

1,570

Sentence count

29


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 I remember there was the typical Christian reaction about how you got these things wrong,
00:00:06.980 even though he gets remarkably so many things right.
00:00:12.700 It was not a atheistic, you know, telling of the flood story, although it is weird.
00:00:22.940 And the movie actually did well.
00:00:26.080 I had never seen it.
00:00:27.080 i did not see it in theaters until last night when i watched it for the first time it was sort
00:00:32.360 of muted even though it was actually a financial success i think it made 350 million dollars
00:00:38.680 on a 100 million dollar budget so it made money um but i don't think it's also left a big impact
00:00:47.240 i'm not sure a lot of people talk about 2014's aronofsky's noah and i did find the film
00:00:57.080 the the pacing's very uneven i guess the tone is pretty consistent but then you'll have these
00:01:05.640 scenes with the watchers who are these rock monsters that to be frank resemble
00:01:11.240 other cgi creatures of that era the transformers and they're like wiping away mankind
00:01:20.980 it seemed like the movie sometimes wanted to be anachronistic or sort of dystopian sci-fi but
00:01:30.820 then it sometimes wanted to be rooted and anthropological and what it was like in prehistory
00:01:37.660 and I did ultimately like it but I guess I'm sticking with my thesis that Darren Aronofsky's
00:01:46.020 best film was his first film the lowest budget he made the best film uh just very uneven and i'm
00:01:56.020 not sure i really want to like re-watch this but those are just my sort of initial superficial
00:02:03.620 impressions the wrestler was pretty good he's made some decent films the wrestler is good yeah
00:02:09.740 yeah i don't think it's a great film i think pie is perfect in the sense of the way i think you
00:02:16.280 judge a film is what is it setting out to accomplish and what it accomplishes so you know
00:02:23.200 2001 can be a great film but then i don't know like a kids movie like i the never-ending story
00:02:32.520 for instance i that's a great film and it's going for less but it does you know what it says
00:02:39.500 what it's trying to go for you know i think there are some comedies that are just perfect you know
00:02:44.700 you don't want to add anything you don't want to subtract anything and they're sort of as great as
00:02:49.580 other films i feel like where i start to dislike a film is this unevenness i'm not sure what
00:02:56.300 they're going for and i do think this film suffers from some bad taste to be honest
00:03:03.340 particularly with the cgi and you know glowing letters and at the beginning in the beginning
00:03:10.140 there was nothing and it's like glowing am i supposed to take that sarcastically or is it
00:03:14.220 i don't know i i just uh i think this film had a lot of problems just as a film not not in terms
00:03:21.020 of his messaging which we'll discuss but just as a film i thought this is not great not really
00:03:26.700 well done but that's just my opinion yeah i i don't think it's a great film but um
00:03:36.460 yeah yeah well um let's let's just jump into i think he's probably a little out of his element
00:03:49.180 because he wants to be an epic on some level but it's not dynamic enough to be an epic
00:03:53.580 it wants to be a hollywood blockbuster also on some level particularly with like the music
00:03:59.480 choices and these cgi scenes of like rock monsters mowing down human beings it wants to be like lord
00:04:06.300 of the rings or something but yeah i think he's just kind of a limited filmmaker generally i would
00:04:12.300 say right even though i think erie astor for example learns from him i think erie astor is a
00:04:18.540 better filmmaker and yaranovsky we can appreciate him because he is a symbolist and i think he does
00:04:25.380 give up a lot of the game which is good so he's useful and probably with the fountain is his most
00:04:30.980 useful film it's the rosetta stone if you will but uh i i think this has interesting stuff too
00:04:37.260 but i i think that this film is kind of simple in its symbolism i don't think that there's that
00:04:42.560 much to decipher or at least from our perspective since we're pretty advanced students of rem but
00:04:48.520 actually alicia said what is your take on the film and i was like i'm not even sure i have a take
00:04:53.680 because it's sort of a like raw gem in a way with like caught stealing and it's funny because
00:05:03.640 neither of us even talked we didn't talk about the film until we just started the podcast but
00:05:08.780 we both had the same conclusion that this is esau's victory basically and and so you're but
00:05:16.700 we're reading into it i mean the the way you could take that movie it's it's a fun action
00:05:21.580 adventure movie or something but no we we went into it but with noah it's maybe just like giving
00:05:29.660 you the source code it's it's like the raw wheat that hasn't been turned into whiskey or what is
00:05:39.580 whiskey made out of corn it's you that's bourbon you get my point the raw material that hasn't been
00:05:46.980 fermented into a a distilled beverage and i feel like we're getting that here i mean the opening
00:05:54.420 scene with the teflon they're connecting that with the say the serpent maybe the serpent from
00:06:00.600 the garden of eden that they're wrapping that is your birthright i mean they're just sort of like
00:06:06.500 explaining things to you in a way he directly explains a genealogy which is very interesting
00:06:13.100 where the good guys noah though he's a bit of a bad guy in this movie but the good ultimately a
00:06:18.880 good guy noah is from the line of seth which is also very interesting um but i don't know where
00:06:28.220 where should we start i i did find there's an interesting clip on the creation story
00:06:33.260 that we could play um and i i actually have the uh the text of the film
00:06:40.620 that noah's father lamech tells him um i could read that and then we could even play
00:06:49.800 basically the the creation story that noah tells to his family while they're on the ark but
00:06:56.620 maybe i'll just start here um in the beginning there was nothing so we we're used to in the
00:07:04.420 beginning god created the heavens and the earth this is a much starker version of genesis 1
00:07:12.960 uh temptation led to sin here we're telling the adam and eve story cast out of eden adam and eve
00:07:24.260 had three sons, Cain, Abel, and Seth.
00:07:30.160 They first had Cain and Abel.
00:07:32.760 It's very interesting, but I guess everything's being condensed here.
00:07:36.980 Cain killed Abel and fled to the east,
00:07:40.700 where he was sheltered by a band of fallen angels, the Watchers.
00:07:44.520 These Watchers helped Cain's descendants build a great industrial civilization.
00:07:50.980 Cain's city spread wickedness, devouring the world.
00:07:55.820 Only the descendants of Seth defend and protect what is left of creation.
00:08:01.600 Today, the last of Seth's line becomes a man.
00:08:06.140 He's the last man.
00:08:07.460 This is an interesting motif that will come up.
00:08:11.480 And then Lamech says,
00:08:12.220 from Adam to Seth, from Seth to Enosh, Enosh to Kenan, Kenan to Mahalalel, to my father,
00:08:19.700 Methuselah, who we'll meet later, and to me. Today, the birthright passes to you, Noah, my son.
00:08:30.800 Do you want to talk about any of this? I mean, Cain, Abel, and Seth seem to be very important
00:08:40.780 here yeah yeah so it's those are all the the bad guys of course the descendants of cain
00:08:49.480 i think what's clear in the film and this just sort of corroborates theory but basically the
00:08:56.160 son the sons of cain are gentiles they're very gentile coded but it's also it's a kind of
00:09:02.440 critique of civilization itself so it's making civilization something evil effectively it's
00:09:07.140 demonizing civilization and what cain is known for in the bible is that he is the the founder
00:09:13.220 ultimately of cities enoch his son is the first one to found a city um so basically the contrast
00:09:21.140 is being drawn is between the followers of yahweh ultimately and the builders of civilization
00:09:27.300 the builders of civilization are equal and ultimately yahweh destroys civilization with
00:09:32.780 flood. So these are all kind of themes that are repeated in the Hebrew Bible. I think it also
00:09:39.040 reminds us of Exodus as well. The scene of the parting of the Red Sea and the drowning of the
00:09:44.880 Egyptians and so forth. Both stories represent a kind of Exodus and an escape essentially from
00:09:53.020 a corrupt civilization or an evil civilization. And so I think that they share that similarity.
00:09:59.760 They repeat this story of Jews or, you know, Noah is not a Jew.
00:10:05.480 I think Noah is actually very kind of Gentile coded.
00:10:08.100 He's sort of the righteous Gentile, essentially.
00:10:12.480 But it represents the followers of Yahweh as refugees and escapees, essentially.
00:10:21.300 And they're ultimately the ones who survive, whereas the civilization is destroyed while they escape, essentially.
00:10:27.380 But the other thing to point out here is that Yahweh is the one who destroys the civilization, but he allows his followers to escape.
00:10:37.780 So I think that that's a kind of interesting repetition that we see with Exodus as well.