{"id":81144,"date":"2014-12-30T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2014-12-30T17:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=81144"},"modified":"2014-12-25T14:50:20","modified_gmt":"2014-12-25T19:50:20","slug":"raindrops-keep-fallin-on-my-head-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/raindrops-keep-fallin-on-my-head-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Raindrops Keep Fallin\u2019 on My Head"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year!<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_69169\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/NOAH.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-69169\" class=\"wp-image-69169 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/NOAH-1024x716.jpg\" alt=\"NOAH\" width=\"600\" height=\"419\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-69169\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A still from <i>Noah<\/i>. Animals, ark not pictured.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Early in Darren Aronofsky\u2019s new movie, <i>Noah<\/i>, the title character, played by Russell Crowe, comes across an antediluvian beastie, a cross between a dog and an armadillo. The beastie snarls because there\u2019s a broken-off assegai tip in its flank, but Noah wins its trust and soothes it before it expires. Since Noah is famous as the Biblical patriarch who saved animals, a moviegoer might be forgiven for looking forward to more such scenes of human-animal interaction. Will there be an explanation about why the dogadillo didn\u2019t make it on to the ark? Will Noah have to talk a lioness out of disemboweling an okapi on board? <i>Will there be trilobites?<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Uh, no, it turns out. Pairs of animals do stream onto Aronofsky\u2019s ark under divine instruction, as calmly and trustingly as if Temple Grandin had designed their on-ramp, but once the creatures are in their berths, the Noah family wafts a censer of magical burning herbs, and presto, change-o\u2014all the animals fall asleep. One of the most charismatic elements of the Noah story\u2014in the opinion of most people under the age of six, <i>the<\/i> most charismatic element\u2014is quietly euthanized. A stowaway descendant of Cain, looking very much like an escapee from <i>Pirates of the Caribbean<\/i>, does bite the head off of a dormant rodent and gnaw upon it with much sententious commentary, and a few implausible-looking CGI birds are deputized to scout for land, but apart from these brief episodes, the ark might as well be empty. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/03\/raindrops-keep-fallin-on-my-head\/\">Read More &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! Early in Darren Aronofsky\u2019s new movie, Noah, the title character, played by Russell Crowe, comes across an antediluvian beastie, a cross between a dog and an armadillo. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16464],"tags":[5563,1051,13426,13429,81,13425,9537,13427,13428,5505],"class_list":["post-81144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2014","tag-adaptations","tag-animals","tag-darren-aronofsky","tag-floods","tag-movies","tag-noah","tag-old-testament","tag-procreation","tag-russell-crowe","tag-the-bible"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Caleb Crain on Darren Aronofsky\u2019s film Noah<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"December 30, 2014 \u2013 We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! Early\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/raindrops-keep-fallin-on-my-head-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Raindrops Keep Fallin\u2019 on My Head by Caleb Crain\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"December 30, 2014 \u2013 We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! 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