Best movie of this year hands down!

Waste of time

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

John Huston directed it and played Noah, yep. John Huston you know, the director of The Treasure Of Sierra Madre and The Maltese Falcon and his atheism shouldn't be an excuse for the embarrassment of The Bible...In the Beginning. Pier Paolo Pasolini was a Marxist, atheist, homosexual who made one of the greatest religious films of all time with The Gospel According To St Matthew. No, here, I suspect, the mastermind behind this super production is Dino De Laurentiis, the producer, the first name in the opening titles. Huge. Famous for very expensive movies with dubious results and intentions. Fortunately this - Highlights from Genesis and beyond - have a narration trying to explain the inexplicable. De Laurentiis believed in a cast of big names - like Harvey Weinstein - yes that's the laziest way to put together a production. Michael Parks is a beautiful 1960's Adam and so is Ulla Bergryd, his Eve. Richard Harris is Cain and Franco Nero Abel, George C Scott is Abraham, Ava Gardner, Sarah. and the film is now nearly forgotten. Pasolini used an unknown in the lead of his Gospel According to St Matthew, Enrique Irazoqui as Jesus and it became a classic. Commercial operations are one thing, great movies quite another.

John Huston was without a doubt one of Hollywood's greats. "The Maltese Falcon" and "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" are undeniable classics, and I even liked his otherwise reviled "Casino Royale". But yes, even Huston had his low points, none more so than "The Bible: In the Beginning...". I watched this overwrought adaptation of the Bible just so that I could heckle like Mike, Servo and Crow do to crummy movies on "Mystery Science Theater 3000". Among my jeers were: (when Eve approaches the Tree of Knowledge): "So is there a mother***king snake in the mother***king tree?" (when Noah leads the animals to the ark): "You'll get more animals if you play a Beatles song." (when God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son): "And do it on Highway 61." Most important is that the story of Noah is a series of plot holes: Why couldn't God have simply conjured up the ark? It seems a little cruel to make an elderly man spend a century building one. Come to think of it, why does everyone live so long in the Bible when the life expectancy in the Bronze Age was approximately 30? Must have been wishful thinking.If Noah spends a hundred years building the ark, doesn't that mean that the DESCENDANTS of the wrongdoers will perish in the flood? Assuming that two of every species was on board, wouldn't that mean that each animal had approximately one square millimeter to frolic? Where and how did they store enough food for a month without refrigeration? Come to think of it, where did all those animals, um, do their business?Considering that the ark was completely closed, wouldn't it have been pitch black inside? Where did the dove find the olive branch if everything was still under water? Once the flood was over, how did the kangaroos get to Australia, armadillos get to the Americas, etc? What was Noah's wife's name? (according to "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure", Joan of Arc was Noah's wife) The point is, this is NOT a movie that I recommend. It's one boring scene after another. I could also note the blatant sexism, but that's not really the movie's fault considering the source: God made man first and then made woman from man's rib, and then neither Noah's wife nor Lot's wife has a name.Just one more thing. Why did God put the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden in the first place if he didn't want Adam and Eve to eat from it?

About the making of the 1959 Christian epic Ben Hur, director William Wyler made a quip along the lines of "It takes a Jew to do this sort of thing properly". However, looking at this tale of Old Testament fire and brimstone directed by non-believer John Huston, one could say what it really takes is an atheist. You see, you have a problem when trying to make a cinematic presentation of the first portions of the bible, which are pretty much a litany of genocide, misanthropy and dubious morality in which it appears God is to be endured rather than praised. How do you present such a story in humane and accessible terms? The Bible: In the Beginning was written by noted Quaker playwright Christopher Fry. Fry does two very important things – firstly, he arranges a handful of bible stories into one satisfying arc, in which God's vindictiveness towards humanity is made a running theme, ending with the final act of mercy in the story or Abraham and Isaac, making this one story rather than a collection. The second thing Fry does is to avoid doing a realist job. Rather than doing what most of the ancient world epics before this did, filling in gaps and fleshing out characters to create a kind of biblical drama, Fry uses only what is actually in the bible. He doesn't, for example, try to imagine what Cain and Abel might have argued over as children, or what bedtime stories Sarah told to Isaac; what little dialogue there is is either lifted directly or adapted closely from Genesis itself. Whether or not it was Fry's intention, the effect is to keep the narrative at the level of a distant, mythical tale. It also leaves the story open to a broad visual interpretation.This is where Huston comes in. Huston makes The Bible: In the Beginning a real feast for the eyes, from the kaleidoscopic creation scenes, to the gorgeous glimmering light in the garden of Eden, to the arc towering over the plains like a Dali painting to the cryptic use of darkness and shadow in the city of Sodom. By and large, Huston's vision is one of mysterious beauty, like gazing upon some ancient artefact. I say "by and large"; the latitude afforded Huston by the Fry script also allows him to do the Noah's arc story with a touch of slapstick comedy. He originally wanted Charlie Chaplin to play the part of Noah, and I so wish Chaplin hadn't turned him down. Nevertheless, Huston himself steps into the breech and does a passable Chaplin-esquire act, and this segments comedy is gentle enough to fit in with the overall tone of solemnity. Huston's collaborators are crucial to the overall effect too. Of particular note is the musical score by Toshiro Mayuzumi, at times playfully Mickey-Mousing the action, at others matching the imagery in its surreal grandeur. The best of the acting performances is certainly George C. Scott's powerful turn as Abraham. Scott is unashamedly theatrical, but again this is in line with the style of the production, going for extravagant presentation rather than dramatic realism.The Bible: In the Beginning was the very last of the wave of ancient world epics that began back in 1949 with Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah, but it is also quite probably the best. Rather than trying to put a recognisable human spin on the story and sermonising directly at its audience, Huston's epic takes the bible for what it is: a work of mythology, on the same level as The Iliad or The Nibelungenlied. And when taken as a mythical saga rather than an apologist piece for God at his most belligerent, it can be viewed as a picture of incredible power and beauty.

Well made considering the time it was done, even the special effects are quite believable and the sequence with the Animals entering the Arc were quite amazing considering. Of course there are inaccuracies but that's to be expected. The animals went in by twos and others in sevens depending if they were clean or unclean, the Arc was more likely box shaped and not shaped like a boat. ( Read Secrets of the Lost Races ) Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden scenes were a bit dark with too much in the shadows and the garden didn't really seem like a paradise to me. Noah and ALL his family, including his daughters in law were all white which seems a little odd considering they populated the whole earth afterwards. Noah's daughters sleeping with him to have children wasn't covered but then this was a few decades ago and Isaac was most likely in his early 20s not the teenager portrayed in this film. Having said all that it is a very watchable for all the family.