A St. Louis Sunset

We had been driving all day, a good 8 hours from our home in Michigan, and we still had a few hours to go to get to our overnight in Springfield, Missouri. We were taking I-255 to go around the south side of St. Louis. As we passed by on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, there low on the horizon was the St. Louis skyline with the famous St. Louis Arch; way off in the distance across the Mississippi River in Missouri. Though St. Louis beckoned, we could not stop. We hurried on; the road ever beckoning. I had "miles to go before I sleep".

Losing the Meta-Narrative in Noah

All stories told assume a larger story of which which the specific story is a part of. It is that larger story which gives context and meaning to the people and events of the story being told. It is this Meta-Narrative issue that is particularly highlighted in Darren Aronofsky's March 2014 film release "Noah".

I knew from seeing the very first trailer release for "Noah", that it was going to be a film that at some point I would want to see. I never expected that this would be a film that closely followed the Biblical narrative of Noah and the flood in the book of Genesis. Subsequent reviews and rantings and ravings confirmed that.

I did not really follow how well "Noah" did at the box office. My general sense was that after the usual initial flash of a new "epic" film, it faded to the obscurity of the cheap re-run theaters where I just this week finally went to see "Noah" for myself. We live in a day when so called epic films have very little staying power in the mind of our media soaked and sated pop culture; that shallow culture that seems incapable of taking time to really think deeply about what it is seeing and hearing, and so quickly rushes on to the newest and "greatest" info spot factoid that grabs its attention. Only time will tell if Aronofsky has made a film that becomes a classic.

It was because of the previous reviews and controversy and hype that I went into the theater with low expectations. This film has some strengths. The depiction of the wickedness of the humanity of the world that perished, though colored by Aronofsky's own meta-narrative context, was not sugar coated, and illuminated the depravity of that per-deluge world. It was finally nice to see a Noah who was not portrayed as some kind of half senile bumbling old man. The passing down of the oral tradition from generation to generation is clearly illustrated; that oral tradition that later would be written down by Moses under the direction of the Holy Spirit. The horror of the destruction is not muffled, and the film, in my mind correctly ties the incident of Noah's drunkenness to the resulting post-traumatic distress he had to deal with after the flood.

Darren Aronofsky clearly took liberties with the Biblical story. There are a number of points where the film departs from the facts as told in Genesis. Those have been more then adequately covered in the essays of other reviewers. I would like to focus on what is the one thing missing from Aronofsky's view of the greater meta-narrative that, in my mind, is a crucial and critical departure from the Biblical meta-narrative, and that is the loss of the place of the promise in the story. I would also submit that it is the loss of this critical point, the promise, that explains much of the factual departures from the Biblical story that Aronofsky made.

Consider the words spoken by God to the serpent; the proto-evangelium:

"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.” (Genesis 3:15)

Add to that meaning of Noah's own name:

"Lamech lived one hundred and eighty-two years, and became the father of a son. Now he called his name Noah, saying, “This one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed.” (Genesis 5:28-29)

It was the purpose of God in the bigger story of the Genesis account, the purpose of redemption, that is absent from the film, and it is that loss which is the most disappointing thing about Aronofsky's telling of the Noah story. He gives us a Noah whose purpose in what he does is at best foggy and muddy; a Noah who seems to have no sense of the promise and meaning of his own name; a Noah who instead of believing the promise as Hebrews 11 describes him, is a Noah who despairs to the point of considering total xenocide; who as another "Adam" is put into the place of making a choice which way future humanity will or will not go. So it is that Aronofsky ends up giving us an essentially pagan Noah.

I leave it to others more qualified then myself to speak to the quality of the acting and the cinematography, as well as the special effects.

It is not my intent to tell you, the reader, if you should or should not see this film. Each of you are capable of making that decision for yourself. Whatever film you do or do not see, I encourage you to ask yourself the question, "What is the larger meta-narrative behind this version of this story?" The meta-narrative of the Bible contains as a crucial part of that narrative, the promise, and it is that promise that, in my mind, makes all the difference in the universe.

Linkin Park- In The End

Henry Moore Art Images On-Line: ArtNet.com has pulled together in one spot a number of on-line images of the work of Henry Moore. This is the link: Henry Moore Art Images.

I'm posting this link as a follow up to my review of a local exhibit of Moore's work, Lines, Shades, and Forms - The Art of Henry Moore. Cheers, ~ The Billy Goat ~

Lines, Shades, and Forms - The Art of Henry Moore: Our local Sculpture Garden is hosting an exhibition of the works of British sculpture artist Henry Moore (1898-1986). Friday afternoon I went to the exhibition expecting once again to be baffled and befuddled by what has been to me the chaotic randomness and charade of abstract art and sculpture. I don't know if it's because I'm getting old or I am finally beginning to understand a little bit about modern art, but I found this exhibit more enjoyable then some others. But I think that was also due in part to the nature of Moore's work as presented in this exhibit.

In terms of sculpture, Moore combined landscape and the basic human form. He took his inspiration from the things around him in nature; a mountain cliffed coastline, the skull of an elephant, even leftover soup bones. His medium was more traditional in the sense he avoided the "welded scrap metal" look of other modern sculptors. He was still abstract in the sense that his forms were deliberately made with gaps and missing parts; a torso without a chest, incomplete legs, and under proportioned heads, all suggestive of a landscape where the subtleties of lines and forms incompletely mimic the reclined human form that was the focus of much of Moore's sculpture.

However, it was not so much the sculptures of Moore that caught my eye as it was his charcoal sketches. Moore believed that an artist could not be a good sculptor unless they were first good at drawing and sketching. He had little use for sculptors who could not or did not draw or sketch. Much of his own work started with sketches and drawings, not blueprints as such, but a rendering of the lines and shades that combined to make the form.

It was those lines and shades that caught my eye; lines and shades drawn in minute detail, put together composing a form recognizable as rock, hill, crevice, and cliff. I saw in those sketches a subtle nuance of shade and lines that was to me, just incredible. As good as his sculptures may be, I would gladly have some reproductions of some of those charcoal sketches hanging in my den or office.

For those of you who may be interested, here is a link to the Henry Moore Foundation. There are some pictures there of his sculpture work, but I didn't see any of his sketches there. If I come across some on the WWW, I'll add that link here.

Cheers,

~ The Billy Goat ~

The Brooklyn Crucifixion: The Cross as Universal Suffering

In the novel, My Name is Asher Lev, Asher, the orthodox Jewish artist, paints two pictures using a crucifixion symbol to portray suffering. The pictures are labeled The Brooklyn Crucifixion,and it is those pictures that enstrange the artist from his immediate Jewish community. It did not help that in the novel, Asher Lev also pictured his parents and himself along with the crucifix theme. For Asher Lev the artist, the crucifix was an artistic symbol of suffering, and thus a legitimate symbol to portray the suffering he had seen in his mother's life. The firestorm of controversy surrounding those paintings came from all sides, Jewish, Christian, and critics.

What may not be known is that Chiam Potok, the author of My Name is Asher Lev, was an artist as well as a writer, and he actually painted a picture called The Brooklyn Crucifixion. David duChemin at Fearfully Human has a posted a Jewish passion which includes an image of Potok's The Brooklyn Crucifixion. (Click here for a view of that image.) Here is a brief quote from duChemin's post:

"...The painting is an extraordinary one, not only because of the subject, but because of the context. In his novel My Name is Asher Lev, Potok writes lucidly about the often painful relationship between art and faith. He also seems to imply that for the Jewish Asher Lev, at least, an understanding of the crucifixion is, well, crucial.

The crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth may be different things to different people, and it's representation in art - including the recent Passion film by Mel Gibson - may stir deeply, but it is at it's most elemental a picture of the plight of man..."

In Isaiah 53, the Prophet sets forth a word picture of the suffering of Messiah. For 2,000 years the cross has represented to Christians the suffering of that Messiah. But Yeshua of Nazareth was not the only person to be executed by crucifixion. Neither was he the only Jew to be crucified by the gentile Romans.

Those of us who believe he is Messiah, also believe that on that cross He took upon Himself the suffering of the world. It is for those out of every kindred, tribe, and tongue, and nation that He suffered (Revelation 5). So it is fitting that crucifixion is a symbol of the suffering of all humanity; the concentration camps, the killing fields of Cambodia, the gulags of the former USSR, the kids in Africa orphaned by Aids and carrying the virus themselves, the starvation in the Sudan, the carnage of war, and on and on it goes.... Suffering... A universal human condition....

"...and God Himself shall be among them. And He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there shall no longer be any death; there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain... (Revelation 21)

~ The Billy Goat ~