Noah

About Peace

How did you celebrate the international environment day? Watch movie? Same here. I watched Noah, a prophetical-like movie crafted by Darren Aronofsky. Even the title was similar to the name of prophet Noah, this film was actually a personal interpretation of Darren.

In one particular interview, this Jewish descendant director told that Noah’s story has a distinctive place in his mind. The first time he remembered how Noah story was delivered, was when Darren was in the seventh grade.

Interestingly, Darren got a chance to read the poem in one of the UN convention. That was because he made a poetry based on the Noah’s story. The poem called: The Dove. Later in a film, we can see how Darren visualize flying dove with a leaf on its beak—the representation of peace.

The Storyline

Before peace came upon Noah and his family, there was a war. This war started since the first generation of human race after Adam and Eve. Their children—Cain and Abel—confronted each other, and Cain killed Abel.

As human generate their race, Cain’s descendant still became the furious one. They tend to rule the world as their mind thinks that they are the perfect creation of The Creator. One of their enemy was Noah and his offsprings.

Meanwhile, Noah received a sign from The Creator that humankind would be destroyed by the huge deluge. Subsequently, he met one of his elder. This old man translated the sign that Noah received through his dream and gave Noah a seed. Right after the seed was planted, his vicinity became jungle—where the wood for making the ark came from.

The flooding water then came from sky and below the earth. Noah was only save each a couple of animals, and his nuclear family. He has a plan to make them the last human on earth. As we all have known, the plan turned out to be failed. Because now here we are, still exist as a human being. Then how that failure has happened?

God’s Test

Noah as a movie, was produced in 2014. There was a controversy due to the act of drunken Noah. According to this, Darren commented:

There’s a complexity that’s not necessarily written in the words of the Bible but it’s hinted at. The second thing Noah does after the flood is he goes and gets drunk and then has this falling-out with his son.

Nevertheless the controversy, Noah deliver the contemplation of human existence. In this film, Noah depicted to execute human existence as God’s willing to start a new life on earth all over again. After all, Noah kept our race exist, and pass the test from God. []

Black swan

Lets talk about this animal: black swan. Have you seen one? I have, once. In Perth. Swan river became the habitat of black swan—one of Western Australia’s tourism object. It became attractive because commonly, we know swan for its white feather. Most people don’t anticipate the existance of swan with nonwhite feather.

On his book entitled The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb use the phrase to explain one phenomena in terms of management. In this video, The Swedish Investor made a good summary. They associate it with how turkey bird facing thanksgiving.

Firstly, they thought that humans are so kind that they fed turkey bird everyday. Even more, humans built fence to keep them save. Unbeknownst, thanksgiving day has coming. The turkey became dinner menu.

That’s the point of what Nassim Taleb called The Black Swan problem. Need another example? Earlier this year, Indonesian government gave a financial stimulus towards tourism industry. By being so, Jokowi’s cabinet hoped that foreign tourist would became easily came to Indonesia.

Unfortunately, they didn’t realize that the calling to foreign tourist could also spread the new kind of coronavirus, the SARS CoV-2 as we know it today. Subsequently, we realize that The Black Swan problem could be defined as a risk that we only know when it has been happened.

The same situation appeared as it described on the film of Black Swan. This 2010 produced movie, tells about how obsession of perfection triggered a halucination in one ballet dancer. This dancer named Nina Sayers, wanted to be appointed as a main dancer on the story of Swan Lake.

Swan Lake itself, was actually a ballet composition created by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1876. Black Swan was an interpretation of Swan Lake. Almost all music scoring in this film, came from Tchaikovsky’s composition.

Meanwhile, the ballet performance tells about a girl who gets turned into a swan, and she needs love to break the spell. Sadly, her prince falls for the wrong girl. At the end of the story, she kills herself.

The plot in Black Swan, focused on Nina’s obsession to get perfection on the stage. Both as a white swan and as the black one. Through the film, we can see how she got depressed and hallucinated. Even so, at the end of her performance, she got a great appreciation.

“Perfect. I was perfect.” Nina whispered as she closed her performance. []