Kevin Klawitter
Location: MN
“Job”
Directed by: Darren Aronofsky
Written by: Darren Aronofsky
Executive Producer: Donald Rosenfeld
Produced by: Darren Aronofsky
Music by: Clint Mansell
Director of Photography: Matthew Libatique
Editor: Jay Rabinowitz
Production Designer: Jack Fisk
Cast:
Mark Margolis - Job
Tagline: “He that argueth with God, let him answer it”
Plot Summary: A prosperous Hebrew farmer named Job lives on his farm with a large, loving family and a healthy selection of livestock. Thankful for his prosperity, he regularly offers burnt offerings to Yaweh and insists his family be well-educated in scripture. All seems well, until one fateful day his farm is seemingly chosen to be the target from raids from several groups of bandits. First come the Sabeans, then the Chaldeans, who slaughter and pillage the livestock from Job’s farm. He tries to keep his family safe, but even he cannot stop it when a fire, set by one of the bandit raiders, spreads across his buildings and burns the homestead where his family was hiding to the ground, killing them all. His friends try to console him, but in mourning he tears his clothes off, shaves his head, and prays, wondering what he must have done to deserve such a fate. His friends encourage him to curse Yaweh, but he refuses.
But things do not get better. He discovers festering boils beginning to appear on his skin. Before long, they cover his whole body. Even his friends will no longer visit him, saying that Yaweh has abandoned him, but Job continues to refuse to speak poorly of Yahweh, and finds himself sitting in the ashes of his former home, painfully scraping the scores of sores off of his body with a piece of broken pottery.
Days pass, and Job’s health continues to deteriorate. Without food, water, or clothes, with sores still covering his body, and harsh weather being a constant, Job simply loses the will and strength to keep praying. Then, as he lays in the ashes, he sees them start to move, being blown away from him. Looking up, he sees the fierce image of a whirlwind bearing down on him. Believing this is God’s final strike against him, Job finds the strength to stand up and stare straight forward at his coming doom.
But as the whirlwind approaches, Job has a strange vision, he sees an enormous burst of light in a dark sea of nothingness, with dust clouds and fragments of rock flying in all directions. Stars burst into being, spinning into nebulae and galaxies, and in the far edge of one of the hundreds of galaxies, a medium-sized yellow star is born, and a green and blue planet covered in waters forms nearby it. Thunder, lightning, and meteor strikes ravage the planet, but the atmosphere grows and living beings begin to populate the seas. Faster than one could imagine, life spreads across the globe in all forms, eventually springing up humanity and the civilizations it heralds. He sees all the great cities of humanity abound, and then comes to the image of himself standing, naked, in the ruins of his own homestead, wallowing in self-pity.
The whirlwind slowly dissipates as it approaches, and Job falls to his knees and prays with renewed strength and vigor, thanking Yaweh for sparing his life and giving him all he has been given.
The sound of Job’s prayers transition to the image of a much older Job, with a larger family, relating to them the story of his ordeal. As he finishes, we pan over his shoulder to see an enormously prosperous farm and ornate buildings, but just before the cut to black, a whirlwind appears in the distance…
Awards Campaign:
The book of Job has long been a well-regarded story of bad things happening to good people, and has been the inspiration for hundreds of stories, but Darren Aronofsky’s unique and unforgettable take on the tale will strike you as few films have before.
The liberties taken come across almost immediately… Aronofsky has seemingly stripped the story of all the supernatural elements. We see no bet between God and Satan, no test of Job’s faith, simply a righteous man whose life is destroyed by what seems to be a completely random and cruel universe. At times, his devotion to Yaweh seem less like the true faith of a righteous man than the last psychological vestiges of a man who has come close to losing his sanity. The elements that seem supernatural, such as the whirlwind and Job’s vision, could be interpreted as a hallucination, and even the epilogue is lightly implied to be an exaggerated retelling of a fable by an old man.
For most directors, it would be incredibly difficult to find an actor to carry the weight of the Job character on their shoulders, but Aronofsky knew from the beginning it would be his regular collaborator Mark Margolis. Although there are other actors and extras, this is largely a one-man show, with Margolis giving a fearless and devoted performance, fully embodying Job’s desperation and sorrow. With little dialogue ( and much of it in unsubtitled Hebrew), he nonetheless draws the audience in and allows Aronofsky to shape the story around him.
Aronofsky’s direction is, as expected, fantastic, affording him another opportunity to marry brutal violence with sometimes awe-inspiring imagery and visual effects. But as dazzling as the vision of God’s existence is, you remember some of the uglier images just as well, such as the viscerally painful sequence of Job scraping away his sores, surrounded by the ashes of his home, with some scraps of belongings, clothing, and even bone fragments still visible in the remains.
Darren Aronofsky’s Job is not a movie for the faint of heart, that’s for sure. But those who watch it will gain an even greater appreciation for the story and the ordeals the title character went through.
FYC:
Best Picture
Best Director - Darren Aronofsky
Best Actor - Mark Margolis
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Crew
Location: MN
“Job”
Directed by: Darren Aronofsky
Written by: Darren Aronofsky
Executive Producer: Donald Rosenfeld
Produced by: Darren Aronofsky
Music by: Clint Mansell
Director of Photography: Matthew Libatique
Editor: Jay Rabinowitz
Production Designer: Jack Fisk
Cast:
Mark Margolis - Job
Tagline: “He that argueth with God, let him answer it”
Plot Summary: A prosperous Hebrew farmer named Job lives on his farm with a large, loving family and a healthy selection of livestock. Thankful for his prosperity, he regularly offers burnt offerings to Yaweh and insists his family be well-educated in scripture. All seems well, until one fateful day his farm is seemingly chosen to be the target from raids from several groups of bandits. First come the Sabeans, then the Chaldeans, who slaughter and pillage the livestock from Job’s farm. He tries to keep his family safe, but even he cannot stop it when a fire, set by one of the bandit raiders, spreads across his buildings and burns the homestead where his family was hiding to the ground, killing them all. His friends try to console him, but in mourning he tears his clothes off, shaves his head, and prays, wondering what he must have done to deserve such a fate. His friends encourage him to curse Yaweh, but he refuses.
But things do not get better. He discovers festering boils beginning to appear on his skin. Before long, they cover his whole body. Even his friends will no longer visit him, saying that Yaweh has abandoned him, but Job continues to refuse to speak poorly of Yahweh, and finds himself sitting in the ashes of his former home, painfully scraping the scores of sores off of his body with a piece of broken pottery.
Days pass, and Job’s health continues to deteriorate. Without food, water, or clothes, with sores still covering his body, and harsh weather being a constant, Job simply loses the will and strength to keep praying. Then, as he lays in the ashes, he sees them start to move, being blown away from him. Looking up, he sees the fierce image of a whirlwind bearing down on him. Believing this is God’s final strike against him, Job finds the strength to stand up and stare straight forward at his coming doom.
But as the whirlwind approaches, Job has a strange vision, he sees an enormous burst of light in a dark sea of nothingness, with dust clouds and fragments of rock flying in all directions. Stars burst into being, spinning into nebulae and galaxies, and in the far edge of one of the hundreds of galaxies, a medium-sized yellow star is born, and a green and blue planet covered in waters forms nearby it. Thunder, lightning, and meteor strikes ravage the planet, but the atmosphere grows and living beings begin to populate the seas. Faster than one could imagine, life spreads across the globe in all forms, eventually springing up humanity and the civilizations it heralds. He sees all the great cities of humanity abound, and then comes to the image of himself standing, naked, in the ruins of his own homestead, wallowing in self-pity.
The whirlwind slowly dissipates as it approaches, and Job falls to his knees and prays with renewed strength and vigor, thanking Yaweh for sparing his life and giving him all he has been given.
The sound of Job’s prayers transition to the image of a much older Job, with a larger family, relating to them the story of his ordeal. As he finishes, we pan over his shoulder to see an enormously prosperous farm and ornate buildings, but just before the cut to black, a whirlwind appears in the distance…
Awards Campaign:
The book of Job has long been a well-regarded story of bad things happening to good people, and has been the inspiration for hundreds of stories, but Darren Aronofsky’s unique and unforgettable take on the tale will strike you as few films have before.
The liberties taken come across almost immediately… Aronofsky has seemingly stripped the story of all the supernatural elements. We see no bet between God and Satan, no test of Job’s faith, simply a righteous man whose life is destroyed by what seems to be a completely random and cruel universe. At times, his devotion to Yaweh seem less like the true faith of a righteous man than the last psychological vestiges of a man who has come close to losing his sanity. The elements that seem supernatural, such as the whirlwind and Job’s vision, could be interpreted as a hallucination, and even the epilogue is lightly implied to be an exaggerated retelling of a fable by an old man.
For most directors, it would be incredibly difficult to find an actor to carry the weight of the Job character on their shoulders, but Aronofsky knew from the beginning it would be his regular collaborator Mark Margolis. Although there are other actors and extras, this is largely a one-man show, with Margolis giving a fearless and devoted performance, fully embodying Job’s desperation and sorrow. With little dialogue ( and much of it in unsubtitled Hebrew), he nonetheless draws the audience in and allows Aronofsky to shape the story around him.
Aronofsky’s direction is, as expected, fantastic, affording him another opportunity to marry brutal violence with sometimes awe-inspiring imagery and visual effects. But as dazzling as the vision of God’s existence is, you remember some of the uglier images just as well, such as the viscerally painful sequence of Job scraping away his sores, surrounded by the ashes of his home, with some scraps of belongings, clothing, and even bone fragments still visible in the remains.
Darren Aronofsky’s Job is not a movie for the faint of heart, that’s for sure. But those who watch it will gain an even greater appreciation for the story and the ordeals the title character went through.
FYC:
Best Picture
Best Director - Darren Aronofsky
Best Actor - Mark Margolis
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Crew