ABSTRACT
The genesis of Darren Aronofsky's version of the flood story can be traced back to a seventh-grade classroom assignment, during which he wrote a prose poem based on the story of Noah. Ever since his poem was singled out to be read over the school's P. A. system, Aronofsky has wanted to make a film about Noah. This anecdote sheds an interesting light on the film Aronofsky eventually directed. This chapter argues that Noah certainly alludes to the genre of the biblical epic, but that this definition is too limiting. It proposes to read the film as an example of Thomas Elsaesser's definition of the contemporary blockbuster as a time machine. The chapter analyzes Noah on the micro-level of two sequences, where certain aspects of the mise-en-scène as well as the narration point to a particular configuration of temporality typical for the contemporary blockbuster.
