Sleep escapes me.
It's 4:41 a.m. The house is still and frozen outside for a few intermittent creaks from upstairs. Spunky rustling and moving about the house. The pellet stove breathes heat and light. My eyes and body are restless, restless enough to, again, wake me up and not allow me to return to sleep. It was only three hours ago or so I fell asleep, and it seems that, for an hour at least, I will remain awake again.
So much for a full night's, body-determined sleep. This is what happens when I drink coffee. Lesson learned.
I have little to blog on in relation to my paper, though, writing has in the last several days come easier to me. Just in general. Writing is a skiff, and I've let it go to let the wind carry it, or at least I'm trying to. What better explorer than the wind?
I watched Noah again on Saturday. Truly, when you step outside the five-armed Jewish demon angels, the abstract cinematography, and the at-times bad, bad acting, the film really explores quite wonderful messages. Stewardship, mercy vs. justice, wickedness and goodness of man, character of a speaking God.
And the overall arc of the film is, as Aronofsky and Handel assert, true to the original story. Everything happens in the correct order, and the themes are the same, though Mattson and others seem to interpret satanic subversions of plot. Yes, God speaks. No, the God is not a demiurge. No, God does not abandon Noah and leave salvation to man. Does Mattson believe in the sovereignty of God? Early in the film, Methuselah says to Noah, "He chose you for a reason." Now, Noah believes the reason for this choice is that he will "complete the task, nothing else." However, by the end it's apparent this is not the case. In fact, under the Jewish assumption that God is, in fact, omnipotent, an assumption Noah seems to hold, God knew Noah would fail. God chose Noah because, in the end, when the final choice between utter justice and final mercy was his, he failed to be complete punishment.
"I looked in my heart and all I felt was love," Noah says to Ila on the beach. "I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve." Jeremiah 17:10.
It's 4:41 a.m. The house is still and frozen outside for a few intermittent creaks from upstairs. Spunky rustling and moving about the house. The pellet stove breathes heat and light. My eyes and body are restless, restless enough to, again, wake me up and not allow me to return to sleep. It was only three hours ago or so I fell asleep, and it seems that, for an hour at least, I will remain awake again.
So much for a full night's, body-determined sleep. This is what happens when I drink coffee. Lesson learned.
I have little to blog on in relation to my paper, though, writing has in the last several days come easier to me. Just in general. Writing is a skiff, and I've let it go to let the wind carry it, or at least I'm trying to. What better explorer than the wind?
I watched Noah again on Saturday. Truly, when you step outside the five-armed Jewish demon angels, the abstract cinematography, and the at-times bad, bad acting, the film really explores quite wonderful messages. Stewardship, mercy vs. justice, wickedness and goodness of man, character of a speaking God.
And the overall arc of the film is, as Aronofsky and Handel assert, true to the original story. Everything happens in the correct order, and the themes are the same, though Mattson and others seem to interpret satanic subversions of plot. Yes, God speaks. No, the God is not a demiurge. No, God does not abandon Noah and leave salvation to man. Does Mattson believe in the sovereignty of God? Early in the film, Methuselah says to Noah, "He chose you for a reason." Now, Noah believes the reason for this choice is that he will "complete the task, nothing else." However, by the end it's apparent this is not the case. In fact, under the Jewish assumption that God is, in fact, omnipotent, an assumption Noah seems to hold, God knew Noah would fail. God chose Noah because, in the end, when the final choice between utter justice and final mercy was his, he failed to be complete punishment.
"I looked in my heart and all I felt was love," Noah says to Ila on the beach. "I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve." Jeremiah 17:10.
He chose you for a reason, Noah? He showed you the wickedness of Man and knew you would not look away. And you saw goodness too. The choice was put in your hands because he put it there. He asked you to decide if we were worth saving. And you chose mercy. You chose love. He has given us a second chance.
- Ila
God knew the entire time Noah would make the decision he did. That's why when God looked to the sky and demanded him to avert this danger, he need not speak or show himself. Noah, looking down at the two children, saw the intrinsic goodness of innocent, pre-fall man he had forgotten. That's what the snake-skin represented, and that's what Noah had lost, lost because the ceremony of Lamech was interrupted at the beginning. The passing of the snake-skin is not, ast Mattson asserted, the passing of Sophia's salvatory wisdom from one gnostic to another. No, it's a reminder that, no matter how far man falls, how evil he becomes, how many lives of animals and other men he kills, he was, in fact, at his core, originally good, beautiful, and made in the image of the Creator. Noah forgets this, and his arc is remembering it, an arc that God knew he would take and, in the process, spare humanity its final extinction.
And no, Mattson. The reason the rainbows are circles is not that they are symbols of "the 'One,' the Ein Sof, in Kaballah, is the sign of monism." It's because all rainbows are circles. We just can't see it most of the time because their points hit the ground somewhere and so we see a bow. It's not heresy, it's science, unless, in fact, Mattson still equates the two, in which case we have bigger problems than a paranoid Conservative throwing around his enlightened "seminary" degree to lambast poor, largely innocent Hollywood films for esoteric, early-Christian and Jewish "heresies" and the Christian leaders who try to redeem them. |
Okay, I guess I'm done lambasting.
I still have some time, so I'll blog a little about Bill, my upcoming film to-be-shot this coming summer.
Epiphanies! yesterday. So, I'm rewriting to bring Bill into the story more. As of before, he was little more than an angel on the shoulder, a voice (and a badly-written one at that!) which pestered Will at certain points in the story and implanted shame and guilt in some misplaced method of care and love for him. He had a very small part, and I'm bringing him in a much bigger way to the story.
Now he's a fellow anorexic in the hospital. I will shoot in the nursing room with the two parallel beds. They will be perfect. Bill will be there when Will arrives. Will still follows the same arc: first, arriving at the hospital; second, deciding to eat to become healthy again. However, once he decides to eat, Bill convinces him that he can remain skinny and still get his heart healthy simultaneously in order to get the insurance coverage. He can, that is, through some tricky manipulation of the system and meals. Bill teaches will how to minimize the caloric input while at the same time healing his heart. Thus the two of them embark on a journey to keep will skinny while his heart heals to get insurance coverage.
In the process, they become "friends."
But soon Bill turns on Will. He lambasts him with disgust and shame. He largely contributes to Will's all is lost moment where he's exercising so hard he throws up. He stops eating. Patty and Dr. Tao have their conversation.
Then Will realizes something: beneath all the world-hating bile Bill spills, he really, really cares and loves. They have a moment, a homosexual moment. They almost kiss in silhouette. There's a shot where both are sitting in Bill's cot, shirtless, Will in front of Bill, staring out the window. Black
The next day, Bill is gone.
Patty comes in, reconciles with Will (somewhat) and Will begins eating again. It's a struggle for him to eat and gain weight, but he does it.
The homosexual moment with Bill represents Will's reunion with himself, the moment where Will, again, begins to see the world-hating side of himself for what it is: really, deep deep love. He embraces it for that, and in the process Bill and Will become one and Will is able to move past his world-hatred to world love. It's very Jungian, very embracing the shadow.
Anyways, I'll play around more with this idea soon. What I really need is events to happen in act two.
Going to try to sleep for an hour and a half or so. Or maybe two hours.
Good night!
I still have some time, so I'll blog a little about Bill, my upcoming film to-be-shot this coming summer.
Epiphanies! yesterday. So, I'm rewriting to bring Bill into the story more. As of before, he was little more than an angel on the shoulder, a voice (and a badly-written one at that!) which pestered Will at certain points in the story and implanted shame and guilt in some misplaced method of care and love for him. He had a very small part, and I'm bringing him in a much bigger way to the story.
Now he's a fellow anorexic in the hospital. I will shoot in the nursing room with the two parallel beds. They will be perfect. Bill will be there when Will arrives. Will still follows the same arc: first, arriving at the hospital; second, deciding to eat to become healthy again. However, once he decides to eat, Bill convinces him that he can remain skinny and still get his heart healthy simultaneously in order to get the insurance coverage. He can, that is, through some tricky manipulation of the system and meals. Bill teaches will how to minimize the caloric input while at the same time healing his heart. Thus the two of them embark on a journey to keep will skinny while his heart heals to get insurance coverage.
In the process, they become "friends."
But soon Bill turns on Will. He lambasts him with disgust and shame. He largely contributes to Will's all is lost moment where he's exercising so hard he throws up. He stops eating. Patty and Dr. Tao have their conversation.
Then Will realizes something: beneath all the world-hating bile Bill spills, he really, really cares and loves. They have a moment, a homosexual moment. They almost kiss in silhouette. There's a shot where both are sitting in Bill's cot, shirtless, Will in front of Bill, staring out the window. Black
The next day, Bill is gone.
Patty comes in, reconciles with Will (somewhat) and Will begins eating again. It's a struggle for him to eat and gain weight, but he does it.
The homosexual moment with Bill represents Will's reunion with himself, the moment where Will, again, begins to see the world-hating side of himself for what it is: really, deep deep love. He embraces it for that, and in the process Bill and Will become one and Will is able to move past his world-hatred to world love. It's very Jungian, very embracing the shadow.
Anyways, I'll play around more with this idea soon. What I really need is events to happen in act two.
Going to try to sleep for an hour and a half or so. Or maybe two hours.
Good night!