Creation
and the Origins of Life Captured on Celluloid
Gaye Williams Ortiz
Unitarian Universalist Church of
Augusta
August 9, 2015
Some of you will have learned about the book of Genesis and its
stories about the origins of life when you were little kids. I remember having
a panic attack in Sunday School when I was in the 3rd grade the day
the teacher explained the first 2 verses of Genesis Chapter 1:
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon
the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the
waters.
What
was freaking me out during that class and for hours, if not days, afterwards,
was trying to imagine the earth without form, darkness on the face of the deep.
That, once upon a time, there was nothing before there was something.
Well, Genesis has also provided hours of cinematic
entertainment and education for many of us, but actually there are less films
about the origins of life than there are about the end of the world; around the
time of the millennium, there was a peak in popular film’s speculation on
apocalypse and the end times. Filmmakers seem to still be more fascinated with
the special effects potential of the end of life on earth and of the universe.
Last year Noah was
released. It was the first big-budget (and live-action) Old Testament epic made
for popular moviegoers since King David (dir.
Bruce Beresford, 1985). It gives us the Great Flood in all its
computer-generated glory, but it’s also an important story about starting over,
the promise of new beginnings after God’s plan for Adam and Eve to live forever
in Paradise was foiled by the serpent, and they were expelled from the Garden
of Eden. Noah, who survives the Great Flood with his family on the ark,
witnesses God’s destructive power, as well as His covenant with humanity that
he will never again wreak such vengeance on his creation.
Although a significant number of people today may not be
acquainted with the basic biblical narratives, the film Noah still can appeal to those who enjoy films about mythology and
ancient history, as well as to Christian audiences, who proved themselves an
economic force to be reckoned with due to the unexpected success in 2003 of The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel
Gibson).
In fact, Noah’s director Darren Aronofsky reportedly had to
reassure studio executives near to Noah’s
release date that it would adhere to the Genesis story, after religious
conservatives expressed a worry that the story would not be literal enough.
It’s apparent from the portrayal of Noah by Russell Crowe that they had reason
to worry. Noah is more like a modern-day superhero than a traditional biblical
one, and Aronofsky admitted that he promised Crowe that his character would not
be reduced to a stereotype, saying: “We wanted to smash expectations of who Noah is.
The first thing I told Russell is, ‘I will never shoot you on a houseboat with
two giraffes behind you.’…You’re going to see Russell Crowe as a superhero, a
guy who has this incredibly difficult challenge put in front of him and has to
overcome it” (Chitwood 2014).
 |
| Director Darren Aronofsky and actor Russell Crowe on the set of Noah. |
[Adele Reinhartz says that]
Biblical texts used in films are, of course, “filtered through the lens of
Western culture”. Some scholars ask whether the “audience[‘s] knowledge of the
Bible is essential, desirable, or even helpful when viewing these films”
(Reinhartz 2003, 186). Just as Middle Earth is a foreign, far-away place for
21st-century moviegoers, audiences may not have much of a contextual framework
for understanding the Near Eastern, Hellenistic, and Roman civilizations, which
are the settings for biblical texts.
And although audiences might miss
biblical allusions that are made in these films, filmmakers themselves, in
making biblical epics, may lack grounding in the Bible.
Revisioning Genesis 1-2
Of the films with
biblical themes, there are very few that portray a literal biblical description
of creation. The 1953 film Sins of Jezebel (dir. Reginald
Le Borg, US) is mainly
concerned with the life of the prophet Elijah and his conflict with Queen
Jezebel, but it begins with a reference to how the world came into being with
an illustrated mural of Paradise, the image
in Genesis of the Garden of Eden as environmental perfection (Gen 1:31) Then a male voice announces, “And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the
east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.” (translation unknown) The
camera draws back, and a robed narrator steps in front of the mural to intone
that this is “the beginning of everything.”
Thirteen years
later in 1966, John Huston made The
Bible: In the Beginning. It actually only covers a portion of Genesis from
creation to the life of Abraham, and it begins with a similar technique to Sins of Jezebel, a narrator (Huston)
speaking the words of Genesis 1 over a four-minute
creation montage; Huston’s choice of image was film of natural phenomena,
accompanied by a modern experimental electronic music soundtrack. He sent
photographer Ernst Haas to capture footage of primordial elements such as
steaming gases, torrential waters, and molten lava, which was then compiled to
convey the gradual emergence of life on earth.
It’s obvious that in adapting stories from the
Bible for the screen, filmmakers may feel the need – in the face of possible objections
from literalists – to attempt to fill the many gaps they perceive in biblical
stories. The editorial and artistic license of these
filmmakers prompts us to ask, is it not the case that the writers of Genesis
also employed their own personal understandings of their own time and culture
when they wrote about creation?
Aronofsky’s script
contains Noah’s own retelling of the story of creation to his family, at the
point in the film where the flood has begun in earnest. Noah’s explanation of
how the world began closely follows the words of Genesis 1, but visuals take
over as the story whizzes from the explosive Big Bang to Adam and Eve. The
audience is treated to swirling galaxies and meteor showers, cell
multiplication and division, and aquatic creatures swimming on ocean beds. Of
course in biblical times, Noah would not have been able to experience or even
comprehend these things. Clearly this is an imposition by Aronofsky (like that
of Huston) of his interpretation of cosmology onto the visual style of the
film.
In addition to a familiarity with the original
Hebrew scripture of Genesis, audiences watching Noah might benefit from
knowing the ancient Hebrew cosmology, which is made up of Heaven, Earth, Sea,
and Underworld. This schema will help audiences in understanding why the Flood
is caused not just when the rains come, but also when “all the springs of the
great deep burst forth ” – portrayed by Aronofsky as geysers shooting out of
the ground into the sky.
 |
| Noah watches as the waters rise |
Another film with a creation
sequence, this time in the opening credits, is Creation (dir. Jon Amiel, 2009, UK), a British film from 2009 about
Charles Darwin’s struggle to complete his work On The Origin of Species (1859). It begins with “… a series of coalescent images: particles in space becoming subject
to gravity, transitioning to cells colliding under a microscope, becoming fish
swimming together in a bait ball” (Compson 2009). Images of the natural world
then fade in and out, and we hear a child asking to be told a story “about
everything.”
This request contrasts this film
with the other creation sequences I’ve mentioned, where the text of Genesis is
imposed upon the viewer and there is no need to ask for “the story.” But a
bigger contrast to those films is the visual implication that forms of life on
earth did not follow a heavenly command to appear day by day but, rather, they
slogged their way through an epic experience of survival and adaptation.
Indeed, later in the film Creation, Darwin’s scientist friend
Thomas Huxley makes clear the astonishing accomplishment of Darwin’s work when
he tells him, “Clearly the Almighty can no longer claim to have authored every
species in under a week; you’ve killed God, sir!”2 The negative
reaction to Creation in this country
– including the long time it took to find an American distributor – was said by
some to be because it was too controversial for American audiences. A Gallup
poll, carried out during the month Creation
was released, found that only 39% of Americans believe in the theory of evolution
(Singh 2009).
Origins of Life in Science Fiction
There are many
science fiction films that explore the beginnings of life, going beyond a
literal reading of Genesis. Science fiction is a genre uniquely suited for dealing with questions of faith, such as “ the shape of
ultimate reality, the meaning of life, and the place of human beings in the
cosmos” (Stone 1998). Maybe that’s because writers and filmmakers of this genre
find that it’s a safe space to ask “What if?” and to explore wildly utopian or
dystopian scenarios.
2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968, US/UK) has been described as “an
example of futuristic pessimism” (Hurley 1970, 162); maybe not surprising since
it was made during the Cold War waged between the United States and the Soviet
Union. It was released just the year before the successful landing of American
astronauts on the moon, so there was interest in space travel and the
popularity of the science fiction genre in general.
The emphasis on
space is obvious, from the opening scene’s alignment of the Earth, Jupiter and
the Sun, complete with Richard Strauss’s Thus
Spake Zarathustra. In a segment about the “Dawn of Man” the film shows the
problematic relationship that humanity has with technology. Nomadic apes in
competing communal groups forage for vegetation, until something happens to
change their lives and the future of life on the planet. They are visited
unexpectedly by a black monolith, which comes to rest in their midst; curious,
they begin to touch and explore it. It somehow imparts knowledge to them, and
one ape grasps an animal bone from the ground and uses it as a tool to kill a
boar for food, but then, to threaten the ape encroaching on his territory. The
power of this violent act is shown in one of the film’s famous images of the
bone being thrown up into the sky in slow motion and becoming, through the
power of Kubrick’s edited cut, a spaceship where murder will take place. Just
as Cain killing Abel in the Bible signifies the first act of murder among
humans, so this image in Kubrick’s film captures the innate capacity of humans
to destroy.
 |
2001: A Space Odyssey
https://davethenovelist.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/2001-creating-tools-that-destroy.jpg
|
Cinematic questions
about the origins of life also incorporate non-biblical creation myths, such as Prometheus, set in the late 21st century
(dir. Ridley Scott, 2012, US/UK). Its title refers to the mythological Titan,
who, in the ancient poem Theogony by
Hesiod, created humanity out of clay and stole fire from the gods for the
benefit of humankind. Like Genesis, this myth provides an explanation for how
humanity gained divine knowledge. The deep space research spaceship bears the
name Prometheus, and carries scientists on a quest to find ancient cultures
that once visited Earth and left the DNA building blocks of human life. The
questions that drive the human astronauts are: “Why are we here? Why were we
created? And why did our creators leave us all alone?” (Roberts 2012). [Vaughn Roberts suggests that] These may have been the exact questions that drove
the author(s) of Genesis to attempt to provide a theological meaning to
creation.
Western culture has always had a
fascination with these supernatural questions; Prometheus, with its archaeologists who discover ancient art and
interpret it as evidence that creator gods visited the Earth, reminds me of
speculation from Erich Von Däniken about alien visitors who left clues in Peru.
The end of Prometheus
promises a direct link to the alien fossil found by the astronauts in the 1979
film Alien, so if there is another
film following it, we may see whether the power wielded by this race of creator
gods will end up being used to create or destroy human life. The film, like the
book of Genesis, examines humanity’s own reckless power and its power to
self-destruct.
Eden and the Loss of Innocence
Some mainstream
films reflect a loss of innocence like that which happens in the Garden of
Eden. The Tree of Life (dir. Terrence
Malick, 2011, US) is a film that offers an extended meditation on this theme.
This film also has a creation sequence – twenty elaborate minutes comprising the
birth of stars, a meteor hitting the Earth, and other apocalyptic images; the
Hubble telescope was the source for some of the shots in the sequence. The
intent was to show the way in which the cycle of life and death is present from
large-scale events of creation to our own lives. The Tree of Life (or Tree of the World, axis mundi) is a mythological image in cultures worldwide. In the Genesis
account, the power of the Tree of Knowledge, from which the fruit is picked and
eaten, is such that mortality results for all humanity.
What about “Genesis imagery in The Truman Show [dir. Peter Weir, 1998]? The director of the show, Christof,
‘cues the sun,’ just like God, (Reinhartz 1999) in this comedy-drama with an
elaborate artificial world and resulting levels of reality. It “not only draws
upon Christian ideas pertaining to the Creation and Fall of the Book of Genesis
but subverts them. The message of the film is that it’s theologically
beneficial to accept change and disorder, rather than live in a sterile, Edenic
paradise, in order for human beings to realize their potential and growth and
to exercise their free will” (Deacy 2008, 13).Truman Burbank grows up and lives in a giant set filled with actors,
oblivious to the fact that he is starring in the ultimate reality show and that
millions of television viewers watch every moment of his life. The town of
Seahaven in which he lives is built inside a giant dome, a safe, secure and
controlled Garden of Eden. The producer/director makes sure that no flaws exist
for Truman and nothing makes him suspect his life is anything but ordinary,
until the day that one of the set lights falls from the sky and nearly hits
him, followed by Truman hearing on his car radio the conversation of crew
members who routinely follow him. What he does then is to weigh up the secure
existence he has known against the desire to live in “true” freedom; as he
steps through the “Exit” door, “Paradise Lost” becomes “Paradise Gained.”
 |
The Truman Show
http://screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Truman-Show-TV-Series-Actor-Jim-Carrey.jpg |
Pleasantville [dir. Gary Ross, 1998], likewise, features a wholesome town, in which two
teenagers become trapped in a situation comedy show from the 1950s. They take
on the roles of teenagers in the fictional family, but as they interact with
other characters, the back-and-white Pleasantville begins to experience bursts
of color and is changed. This
film equates the Garden of Eden with the stereotypical 1950s American town[.
Reinharz says that “[…]] and the 1950s represent perfection: family values,
safe sex, everything pleasant, and everyone happy. All human needs are taken
care of, as in the first creation story in which God gives everything to the
first human beings” (Reinhartz 2003, 150). The knowledge that the teens possess
of another world and another way of being and behaving is analogous to the knowledge
Adam and Eve gain when they eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. They
precipitate the “Fall” of Pleasantville, which is introduced through the
changes to the townsfolk’s lifestyle from the 1950s to the 1990s, bringing, in
Reinhartz’s words, “complexity, eventfulness, and, above all, color” (Reinhartz
2003, 158).
In the 1986 film The
Mission (dir. Roland Joffé, 1986, UK) an
innocent indigenous tribe living above the falls in the South American
wilderness has its world changed by a Roman Catholic mission that brings
“civilizing” religious and cultural practices. Once the mission is established
the tribe members become political pawns and fodder for the slave trade. They
are caught between the Church’s attempts to convert them and the slave trader’s
attempts to capture them, and are subjected to a massacre, which only a few
children survive. At the end of the film we see the young Guarani leaving the
mission, taking with them what is arguably the only positive aspect of
civilization introduced to them – musical instruments. Their Garden of Eden has
been destroyed, not by their own disobedience to God, but by the conflict
between individuals and institutions.
Stewardship and Care for the Planet
While there are
films that take metaphorical approaches to the biblical theme of innocence
lost, other films call for spiritual reconnection to creation through good
stewardship of the environment. One of the earliest, in the experimental genre,
is Koyaanisqatsi (dir.
Geoffrey Reggio, 1982, US), which is a Hopi Indian term meaning "life out
of balance." This film is part of a trilogy that immerses audiences in images of the
destructive impact of technology upon the earth and its ancient cultures.
Science fiction films have been warning since the 1950s
about the potential consequences should humans abdicate their responsibility as
stewards. Soylent Green (dir. Richard
Fleischer, 1973), The China Syndrome
(dir. James Bridges, 1979), and The Day
After Tomorrow (dir. Roland Emmerich, 2004) are American films that explore
the consequences of human neglect and exploitation of the environment. Silent Running (dir. Douglas Trumbull,
1972, US) envisions a future where the earth’s forests are put into huge domes
floating in outer space, tended by a renegade astronaut who is depicted as a
St. Francis-like figure.
 |
Bruce Dern in Silent Running
http://cdn1.sciencefiction.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/1344875239-silent-running.png |
Coming back to Noah,
its storyline provides the basis for the responsibility of humanity for
stewardship of the earth. Given the recent popularity of Noah among evangelical Christians whose leaders deny ‘global
warming’ and evolution, there is an irony coming from the preponderance of
American-made films about the dangers of ignoring the covenant God made with
humankind to take care of the created order.
Conclusion
It’s a hopeful sign that the glory of creation
and dire warnings about our failure to protect it still play well in Hollywood.
In addition, the eternal questions about where we came from, and our purpose
for existing, seem likely to find a place in future film scripts for some time.
This week President Obama and the EPA announced
the Clean Power Plan, which may prove to be a historic and important step of
real action on climate change in reducing carbon pollution from power plants.
We can not only hope and pray that initiatives like this will slow down the
destruction of our planet, but we must play our part in reducing our
environmental footprint. Our congregation’s Green Sanctuary effort needs your
support and involvement.
We hope you’ll enjoy this afternoon’s film but we also
hope that it will give you some cause for reflection. Godzilla and Noah are
only film characters, and try as they might, they can’t save the planet for
generations to come – only we can do that, in real life, at this time.
May we be the ones who make it so,
Blessed be, Amen.
Bibliography
Alter, Robert. The World of Biblical Literature. London: HarperCollins, 1992.
Alter, Robert. The Five Books of
Moses: A Translation. W.W. Norton and Company, 2008.
Brooke, John Headley, “Wilberforce,
Huxley, and Genesis.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible, edited
by Michael Lieb, Emma Mason, Jonathan Roberts, 397-412. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011.
Deacy, Christopher
and Gaye Williams Ortiz. Theology and
Film. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008.
Donaldson, Mara E.
“Teaching Field of Dreams as Cosmogonic Myth,” in Journal of Religion and Film 2,
no. 3 (December 1998), http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/fieldof.htm.
Havrelock, Rachel. “Genesis.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible, edited
by Michael Lieb, Emma Mason, Jonathan Roberts, 11-24. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011.
Hurley, Neil
P. Toward a Film Humanism. New York: Delta, 1970.
Izod, John. Myth, Mind and the Screen. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Pilch, John J. A Cultural Handbook to
the Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012, Kindle edition.
Plate, S. Brent. Religion and Film. London: Wallflower Press, 2008.
Reinhartz, Adele. Scripture on
the Silver Screen. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003.
Reinhartz,
Adele. “Scripture on the Silver
Screen.” Journal of Religion and Film
3, no. 1 (April 1999), https://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/scripture.htm.
Roberts, Vaughn, “Between Eden and Armageddon:
Institutions, Individuals, and Identification in The Mission, The Name of the
Rose, and Priest.” In Explorations in Theology and Film,
edited by Clive Marsh and Gaye Ortiz, 181-192. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.
Wall, James M. “2001: A Space Odyssey and the Search
for a Center.” In Image and Likeness,
edited by John R. May, 39-46. New York: Paulist Press, 1992.
Filmography
Alien series (dir. Ridley Scott, 1979, 1986, 1992,1997)
An Inconvenient Truth (dir. Davis Guggenheim, 2006)
Avatar (dir. James Cameron, 2009)
The Bible: In the Beginning (dir. John Huston, 1966)
Chasing Ice (dir. Jeff Orlowski, 2012)
The China Syndrome (dir. James Bridges, 1979)
Creation (dir. Jon Amiel,
2009)
The Day After Tomorrow (dir. Roland Emmerich, 2004)
The 11th Hour (dir. Leila Conners and Nadia Conners, 2007)
Field of Dreams (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1989)
The Great Gatsby (dir. Baz Luhrmann,
2013)
Koyaanisqatsi (dir. Geoffrey Reggio, 1982)
Man of Steel (dir. Zack Snyder, 2012)
Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2014)
Prometheus (dir. Ridley Scott, 2012)
Revenge of the Electric Car,(dir. Chris Paine, 2009)
Rivers and Tides (dir. Thomas Reidelsheimer, 2001)
Silent Running (dir. Douglas Trumbull, 1972)
Sins of
Jezebel (dir. Reginald Le Borg,
1953)
Soylent Green (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1973)
Them! (dir. Gordon M. Douglas, 1954)
The Tree of Life (dir. Terrence Malick, 2011)
2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
Who Killed The Electric Car (dir. Chris Paine, 2006)
Winged Migration (dir. Jacques Perrin, 2001)
Aronofksy also draws upon the Book of Enoch, a non-canonical Jewish
writing that begins with the fall of the Watchers, the angels who fathered
giants known as the Nephilim.
