Cosmic Well

On the evening of the 22nd of Tishrei, 5785, the 19th of Rabi’ II 1446, October 24th, 2024, during Simchat Torah I sat with my wife to watch the film Genesis: Creation to Flood (dir. Ermanno Olmi.)

Now, my wife is Jewish and I’m Muslim, so it might seem a little odd that we chose to commemorate the start of the yearly Torah reading cycle with a Christian produced film. Yet we are all People of the Book, and my tradition emphasises learning from right-doing Christians, just as hers emphasis learning from any who do good. I also have other theological and personal reasons I have no problem with it, but that’s another post. 

This film was produced in the 90s as the second in the Turner films Bible Collection series. I had watched many of the others in the series when I was younger, but I skipped Genesis. I wasn’t ready for it. It had a narrator and little to no dialogue, and I wanted a traditional narrative film. 

I’m glad I waited because the film I watched with my wife was something I needed to experience now, and could not have appreciated earlier in my life.

Genesis is a mystical-poetic contemplation on the ancient Israelite Creation and Flood narratives. It brilliantly weaves the words of Genesis, as told by The Storyteller (played by Omero Antonutti), with visual narrative that is not quite what the written text says is happening. 

The story of the six day Creation is laid over the “simple” truth of the rising and setting of the sun. The Creation of humans is shown as the birth of a new baby and their growth, and most fascinatingly there is an element of the discovery of sexuality to the Adam and Eve narrative. 

The combination of the narration of Adam being put to sleep so Eve could be made from his rib with the visual of a young man simply sleeping under a tree as a young woman prepares to come meet him, spoke to us of women’s mysteries. Of something happening that the man cannot be around for. That Adam then awakes, and knows the woman is “flesh of his flesh” was strikingly depicted as the two of them having sex. This continues throughout the film, with the supernatural elements of the Narration mediated via the onscreen visuals. 

Adam and Eve leaving the Garden is shown as the two of them leaving home to start their own family. The favor God shows Abel instead of Cain is rainstorms and animals washing away and eating the crops Cain grows, while Abel seems to have an easy time caring for sheep. The murders of Abel and Cain, with the subsequent declarations of retribution are depicted as the growth of violence over and against solidarity and community. Similarly the reasons for the Flood are the growing violence, lack of hospitality and care for all, and the abandonment of the poor by those who build cities and dwell safe in their shelters.

All this is done with no dialogue, save for at the very beginning when a child expresses fear at the coming of night and is reassured that the light of a new day will arrive. There are long stretches of action, where people are simply living their lives, showing us the growing disregard and care of their surroundings that would lead people to ignore Noah when he warns them of rains the like of which they’ve never seen before. This is all contextualized by focusing in, again and again, on the families affected by the passage of time. We aren’t asked to see this narrative grandly through the eyes of humanity as a whole, but on the micro scale, through a small number of people. 

Because of that, when the film does zoom out and look at human history grandly, through images of war and climate disaster, it isn’t overwhelming. They connect the pre-flood narrative of spreading corruption, violence, and injustice with contemporary struggles. With this framing it is impossible to separate the capitalist caused climate crisis of today from the indifference and greed associated with Noah’s flood. And I think that is the film makers intent. 

This is why the film works so well. It is a meditation on the human condition that uses the trope of the ancient oral narrative to great effect. I  do not envision another way the film could have told the story of the Creation and the Flood except by utilizing narration and film the way they did.¹ I would like to see more films like this, something that captures the art of oral storytelling while also depicting that story in a way that only film can. It almost makes me sad that the rest of the films in the series will be more traditionally structured. I also happen to think that this form could work especially well for adapting narratives from the Qur’an.  

Part of the reason the film impacted me the way it did, as a mystical experience, is because I have been exploring the contemplative paths of our traditions. Seeing in the natural movement of the world, the activity of God. Seeing in storytelling the necessity of preserving the essence of what we know, rather than necessarily the exact facts. I see here a connection to my wife’s interest in adaptation studies. If you dip a toe into that field, you’ll learn pretty quickly that fidelity to the source material can be measured in many ways, but I think most importantly in how it uses the new medium to affect the audience in ways that are similar to the original work. This may involve the taking of liberties with the exactness of the adaptation, but good artists will make this a strength, rather than a weakness. 

It is clear that Olmi and the team at Turner knew what story they wanted to tell and what their artistic strengths were.  I highly recommend this film. 

I will be following this review up with reviews of the rest of the series. Stay tuned.

1. Through all this, the connection is made that the flood, emergence from the ark, and God’s covenant with Noah carry echoes with the original creation story. Seven days for creation, and multiple uses of seven in relation to the Flood. ↩︎