A new, “accurate” Noah movie will apparently consist almost entirely of scenes that aren’t in the Bible

A new, “accurate” Noah movie will apparently consist almost entirely of scenes that aren’t in the Bible October 12, 2015

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We’ve seen the big-budget, secular-Hollywood version of the Noah story. Now comes the low-budget, independent-Christian version. South African filmmakers Frans Cronje and David Ferreira have launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for an “historically accurate, biblically authentic” movie called Flood of Faith.

Here is the video for the fundraising campaign:

The Indiegogo page never mentions Darren Aronofsky or his Noah movie by name, but it’s pretty clear that Cronje and Ferreira are positioning their film as a response to Aronofsky’s film on some level. Ironically, however, the central theme of the Cronje/Ferreira film isn’t all that different from the central theme of the Aronofsky film: namely, how to reconcile the impulses of justice and mercy.

In the video above, Cronje describes how his film will begin with Noah and his family already sealed within the ark as the Flood begins. And then, says Cronje:

Suddenly, there’s sunshine. The storm subsides. They go onto the deck of the ark, and they see this beautiful sunlight. They walk out, and they praise God for the sunlight — and then it hits them. The whole earth has just been wiped out. There’s nothing left. It’s just water as far as the eye can see. For Noah’s three sons, their three wives have just lost all of their family. Everyone is dead. And then they ask this question: Who is God? Is he a judge, trying to just hit us and kill us when we do something wrong? Or could he also be a God of love. And the rest of our movie just deals with this.

Ironically, while Cronje says his movie will be historically and biblically “accurate”, it sounds like the bulk of the film will take place on the ark after the rains stop — and there is nothing in Genesis whatsoever about Noah’s activities on the ark during this period, except for the fact that he sent a few birds out to look for land.

In other words, virtually the entire movie that Cronje is proposing here will consist of invented dialogue. He will be filling in the story’s gaps — just as Aronofsky did.

And from the sound of it, I’m not sure he’ll be filling in the gaps as well as he could.

For example, would it really only have occurred to Noah’s family that everyone they knew was dead after the flood waters had covered the earth? Aronofsky’s film, at least, showed Noah and his family wrestling with the justice-versus-mercy question before the Flood waters hit, and indeed also after the Flood waters hit, while the people outside the ark were clinging to the mountain peaks and crying for help.

And Aronofsky wasn’t the first filmmaker to show Noah and his family reacting to the sounds of people drowning outside the ark. John Huston’s much more traditional take on the story, in The Bible: In the Beginning…, also showed Noah’s family reacting to the sounds — and Noah declaring that God was just getting rid of the “chaff”.

Will there really be no equivalent scene in Cronje’s film? As ever, I guess we’ll see.

In the meantime, if you’re interested, you can check out the film’s Indiegogo page as well as its official website, its Facebook page and its Twitter page.


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