Movie: Gold

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

The End of the Rainbow
The Very End

Plot Overview

A callow city fellow (Zac Efron) responds to a company's “opportunity” to “become a new man” at “the compound” in the middle of nowhere. His contracted ride (Anthony Hayes) charges him extra “for gas and whatnot,” but he over­taxes the engine when it's his turn to drive. While repairing it in situ, they stumble on a “huge hunk of gold,” and the city slicker stays to guard it while his rural ride heads off to rent an excavator. Alone he is visited by heat­stroke, dust storm, wild dogs, a local (Susie Porter) who comes to grief, and an avenging ghost … or was it her sister (Cricknowle)?

Ideology

Add to the mix the outpost attendant (Andreas Sobik) watching a TV program of two men in a bar debating (“One more crack about the Irish and I'll shoot you”) the merits of human stock (“There's no finer race of men that has peeled a potato.”) They have a drink “to the god who has forsaken us” and seemingly settle the matter by referring to Charles Darwin's, The Origin of the Species By Means of Natural Selection, a work often cited, but whose complete title reads, The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life—you can see the title of a first edition displayed in the movie, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.” The completed cast introduces a new element to the picture along the lines of P.F. Kluge:

Remember those TV documentaries that tell you how the whole human race, kit a caboodle, came out of a river gorge some­place in Africa? And how, what with DNA, every­body can eventually be connected to every­one else? Out in the big world, you shrug. Africa isn't my home­land and whether I'm forty degrees of separation from Einstein or Hannibal doesn't matter to me. A lot of time has passed and the world is wide.—

“That woman,” a guy named Davey told me at Hamilton's, “is an archetype.” It sounded like a tribe.

“What?”

“A recurrent cultural figure,” he said. “Something like a myth or a legend. The hitch­hiker that you whiz past on the high­way who pops up, again and again, down the road. That kind of thing: the woman who comes out of the boonies … and onto a construction site with a machete in her hand, claiming ownership” (272.)

Here the archetype is, (Sirach 44:17) “Noah was found perfect and righteous; in the time of wrath he was taken in exchange [for the world;] there­fore was he left as a remnant unto the earth, when the flood came.” He shows up in many movies I've reviewed and is here represented by the aged attendant.

(Gen. 6:10) “And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.” They formed them­selves into two pairs: the eldest Japheth & Shem, and the youngest Ham paired with his own son Canaan making the numbers even. In our movie the two riders are a pair as are the two sisters when we include the one that came later. Noah fortified him­self with wine before invoking blessings on them, as later would Isaac with savory venison before blessing Esau. The (red) yakut wine of Turkey is a blend of four grapes—actually two pairs—so the numbers correspond.

Before driving off, the man in the pickup gives opportunity-man some cans of beans to sustain him and tells him to catch what­ever he can as well. He tries and fails to kill a snake, the first sister offers him some dried snake meat. God after the flood grants Noah that, (Gen. 9:3) “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.” Before that they were high potency vegetarians. This change in diet may not seem much when we think of it in terms of chicken, beef or pork—no kosher dietary regs yet,—but we might get a better feel for the change from watching this movie featuring snake meat. That was Mickey Mouse; let's try some­thing more challenging.

In the Genesis account of the Flood, is a mystery woman, the mother of Ham. (Gen. 9:18-19) “And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth over­spread.” Let's look again at Noah's story (Jasher 5:14-17):

And the Lord said unto Noah, Take unto thee a wife, and beget children, for I have seen thee righteous before me in this generation. And thou shalt raise up seed, and thy children with thee, in the midst of the earth; and Noah went and took a wife, and he chose Naamah the daughter of Enoch, and she was five hundred and eighty years old. And Noah was four hundred and ninety-eight years old, when he took Naamah for a wife. And Naamah conceived and bare a son, and he called his name Japheth, saying, God has enlarged me in the earth; and she conceived again and bare a son, and he called his name Shem, saying, God has made me a remnant, to raise up seed in the midst of the earth.

Shem and Japheth were full brothers, Ham was born at a later date (the youngest, see Gen. 9:24) perhaps from a different mother. Noah's wife was older than he was. Perhaps at 580+ years she was no longer able to bear children after the first two. She didn't have any more after the flood, even though it was a time to repopulate the earth. Maybe she stopped bearing before the flood. Ham could then have been step­brother of the other two.

Researcher Mark DeWayne Combs posits that, “Although Jasher specific­ally references the births of Japheth and Shem, there is no such reference to the birth of Ham. … that Ham may have been much younger than his brothers and that he may have had a different mother” (389). Combs also observes, “Fathering a child, particularly a son, through a hand­maiden or servant girl would not have been an uncommon or forbidden practice in that time period” (165). Historian Kenneth M. Stampp remarks that “Apologists for slavery traced the history of servitude back to the dawn of civilization and showed that it had always existed in some form until their own day” (14).

In “Gold” we see opportunity-man arriving at the way station on a box car he shares with a colored woman (Akuol Ngot) nursing a baby. Every­body has a mother, but she's not his. The two men arrive by road or rail­road, the sisters across the plain direct. They have different origins, as do the nature creatures portrayed at the beginning: vultures in free flight and ants phoneme-guided on ant trails.

Now we get down to the nitty gritty. Pickup-man tells opportunity-man that what awaits him at the compound is “hard labor, sh!tty hours and real dirty work,” which the latter figures is not much different from what he had where he came from. It is the estate of man inherited from father Adam. The biblical story is widely known of Adam & Eve's temptation and fall in the Garden of Eden, how the woman ate the forbidden fruit and gave it to her husband to eat (Gen. 3:6), God responding by increasing the severity of the woman's child­birth pains (Gen. 3:16) and making man's toil onerous (Gen. 3:17-19.) What is less well known—except in places like the Bible Belt—is a redo of sorts to ameliorate man's difficult labor.

Noah's father Lamech had (Gen. 5:29) “called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed.” They still had to follow the earlier template to get a reprieve. Instead of the forbidden tree to be respected by the first couple, there was old man Noah whose work break was to be respected by his three sons.

Come the deluge and the ark's passengers could well be a model for, (James 5:13) “Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms.” There was undoubtedly a lot of distress on their voyage occasioning a lot of prayer, and their eventual land­fall would have been accompanied by much celebration. As ordained minister Tom Dooley points out, “Such a long period of ark living must have been quite tire­some. No doubt Noah's family was thankful for their safety and provisions; however, one could imagine them becoming restless, ready to get their feet on dry land again” (59.)

When (Jasher 6:40-41) “they all went out from the ark, they went and returned every one to his way and to his place, and Noah and his sons dwelt in the land.” They'd been cooped up together long enough, so now they spread out some­what according to some prees­tab­­lished pecking order. God (Jasher 6:42) “said unto them, Be fruitful and fill all the earth; become strong.” To become strong meant, among other things, taking their needed meds when sick, along the lines of, (James 5:14) “Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” Children are always getting sick. Here it seemed to be Canaan's turn whose elders would have been his father Ham and grand­father Noah. Oil in Bible times was a medication, (Luke 10:34) “bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine,” as was, (1Tim. 5:23) “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.” Grapes grow in the summer, but once they're fermented, the wine can be stored through­out the year. Noah got into the store while setting an example for a work break, establishing period(s) of escape from hard work per Lamech's saying. By chance or design it interfered—it had to incon­venience some­one—with Ham's youngest son Canaan's need, and Ham could well have been the low-status brother from another mother.

Instead of the wily serpent we had Noah's wife as an on-the-spot agent, who since she isn't mentioned, did well incurring no rebuke. She would have made her­self scarce giving Noah some space to relax when he started drinking. (1Tim. 2:9-10) “In like manner also, that women adorn them­selves … (which becometh women pro­fes­sing godli­ness) with good works.” Being a virtuous woman (Prov. 31:27) “She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.” She would not have let grass grow under her feet but would have gone straight to visit Ham to make adjustments regarding their diminished store of medicinal alcohol, like the home­spun heroine in an Andrew Taylor novel:

Mrs Arabella was a woman of decision. Having made up her mind to do some­thing, she did not post­pone it and did not permit half-measures. The inoculation of the house­hold was arranged the following day and put into practice on the day after. (175)

Ham showed up at Noah's tent shortly thereafter to check out the cause. He fell to temptation by mocking his dad to his two brothers, but they would have none of it. This is parallel to Eve earlier failing first then offering the fruit to Adam who accepted it, but here the older brothers did not go along with Ham, so we'd expect them to receive a blessing rather than a curse such as it was. The distribution of labor had to be readjusted to account for the new workers' holiday(s), and Ham for his insolence left him­self and his family line open to taking up the slack. Depicted below is that scene rendered in a Civil War vintage wood­cut, made after a drawing by Julius Schnorr von Carols­feld (German painter, 1794–1872) from his archive, published in 1877.

The alternate image text by licensor iStock.com/Getty Images explains what happened to Noah: “When he drank some of the wine, he got drunk and uncovered him­self inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers who were outside. Shem and Japheth took a garment and placed it on their shoulders. Then they walked in back­wards and covered up their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so they did not see their father's nakedness (Genesis 9:21-23).” They covered the old man to prevent him from catching a chill in the mountains as it was no longer summer. Ham's show of disrespect to their patriarch is like the treatment of a revered matriarch in a Seymour novel:

I don't think she'll be pleased to know that her picture is now a source of amusement through­out Naples. When she knows, and she soon will—it's inevitable—that her daughter … is in part responsible for her being photo­graphed with bare thighs and most of her arse on display, I believe she'll feel resentful towards you. (131)

The way station attendant was zoned out on the television, an electronic drug. That was his work break. He couldn't be bothered with the newly arrived job seeker asking questions except to point him to the out­house for his need. It had a door on it for modesty. The traveller was also modest relieving him­self on a snag when their truck broke down. It was there he discovered the gold, a blessing (“What are the odds, man!”) The inquisitive sister, how­ever, was a pain, violating his personal space, suggesting to his addled mind that he take his shoes off, and demeaning his people: “You people are a virus.” It was the train represented by the attendant that brought the “virus” to her home turf she came to defend with a knife.

Ham had put himself in jeopardy according to, (Prov. 30:17) “The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.” Especially pertinent in this case is Noah's control over the animals including the raven (Gen. 8:7) and he is not unique, at least not in literature. Novelist Ted Bell writes of a chief inspector who “had been beaten to within an inch of his life and nearly pecked to death by countless killer ravens. All the while locked inside the cage of a Victorian aviary” (357.) There is even biblical precedent for it when some kids mocked a man of God for not having a covering of hair on his head and they got mauled by beasts. (2Kings 2:23-24) “And … and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.”

There's a parity of eye loss and servitude given in (Exodus 21:26) “And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye's sake.” Ham and his line—represented by Canaan in his lineage—could be given servitude rather than mutilation. This would be in keeping with the sentiment of Job in, (Job 31:7-8) “If my step hath turned out of the way, and mine heart walked after mine eyes, and if any blot hath cleaved to mine hands; Then let me sow, and let another eat; yea, let my offspring be rooted out.” In that woodcut-derived picture above we see Ham after disregarding his mom's caution, checking up on his dad, getting carried away by an eyeful of the dishabille inebriate, and gesturing with his hands to his brothers. If he were to “sow, and another eat” and his “off­spring be rooted out,” that would mean becoming a slave and his off­spring being carried away in slavery. Okay.

The Bible's account leans towards the latter. (Gen. 9:24-27) “And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son [Ham] had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” When Noah woke up, he blessed as a pair the lines of his two respectful sons and cursed Ham's line­—pairing Ham with his youngest son Canaan as was Noah's wont to go by twos—giving them servitude to his other two sons'. (Jasher 73:35) “For the Lord our God gave Ham the son of Noah, and his children and all his seed, as slaves to the children of Shem and to the children of Japheth, and unto their seed after them for slaves, forever.”

Ham's youngest son Canaan is the particularly noted recipient of the punishment. Later when the Israelis invaded the promised land, the Canaanites were due for destruction, but the Gibeonite branch (the Hivites of Joshua 11:19 & Gen. 10:15-17) did a deal with Joshua who was the Jewish leader. They'd heard what happened to other Canaanite tribes, so they sent ambassadors dressed as if they'd come from a long journey (Joshua 9:3-6) and persuaded Joshua to make a league with this “distant” tribe. When it was discovered they'd tricked Joshua into sparing them, (Joshua 9:24-27) he made them bond­men, which was more to their liking. If this trick is indicative of the character of the original Canaan, he might well have been malingering to get out of his chores, which would also help explain Noah's hesitation to coddle him with wine. And when it came time to deal with the sin, it affected the whole line of Ham.

More germane to modern times is perhaps the lineage of Cush, Ham's oldest son (Gen. 10:6,) Cush meaning black in Hebrew, having settled in Africa, some of his to become in later years African-American slaves. Researcher Bodie Hodge confirms that, “As a general trend, Ham is the father of many peoples in Africa” (122). Dr. Ide adds, “Ham sired four sons: Cush (translates as ‘black’) … and Canaan the youngest” (62).

In “Gold” the second sister offers to help a thirsty Mr. Opportunity, “There's a water hole. I could walk you there. You'll die if you don't.” She volunteered to be his servant sans pay.

God instituted capital punishment with Noah. (Gen. 9:5) “And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” Here two of the four conspire and kill one of their number. The fourth one executes the murderers, by two different methods—think gas chamber (“I see smoke”) and firing squad.

Production Values

“” (2022) was directed by Anthony Hayes. It was written by Anthony Hayes and Polly Smyth (a couple.) It stars Zac Efron, Anthony Hayes and Susie Porter. Efron does a fine job as a character on the ropes. Mostly they spare their words except for the invasive first sister.

MPAA rated it R for language and some violent content. It was bestial. Filming was done on location in the Outback, South Australia, Australia. Very desolate surroundings, and the dust storm was real. Runtime is 1 hour 37 minutes.

Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation

You know two guys, strangers, on a drive are not going to be saying much to each other, much less one of them by his lonesome. The chick makes up for it and then there's the dogs. Here is a movie for the patient soul. There are some off-the-cuff references to a deteriorating society, but these few souls have their share of problems.

Movie Ratings

Action factor: Decent action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Reality footage. Video Occasion: Better than watching TV. Suspense: Don't watch this movie alone. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.

Works Cited

Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769, 1873. Print. Software.

Apocryphal scripture was taken from The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English. U.S.A.: Hendrickson Pub. Originally published by Samuel Bagster & Sons, Ltd., London, 1851. Print, Web.

The Book of Jasher. Translated from the Hebrew into English (1840). Photo litho­graphic reprint of exact edition published by J.H. Parry & Co., Salt Lake City: 1887. Muskogee, OK: Artisan Pub., 1988. Print, Web.

Bell, Ted. Patriot. Copyright © 2015 by Theodore A. Bell. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Print.

Combs, Mark DeWayne. End the Beginning. USA: Splinter in the Mind's Eye Pub., 2014. Print.

Dooley, Tom. The True Story of Noah's Ark. Copyright © 2003 by Tom Dooley. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Pub., 2016. Print.

Hodge, Bodie. Tower of Babel: The Cultural History of Our Ancestors. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Pub., 2013. Print.

Ide, Arthur Frederick. Noah & the Ark: The Influence of Sex, Homo­phobia and Hetero­sexism in the Flood Story and its Writing. Las Colinas: Monument Press, 1992. Print.

Kluge, P.F. The Master Blaster. Copyright © 2012 by The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.. New York: Over­look Press, 2012. Print.

Lions den picture is copyright © Sweet Publishing. Licensed by FreeBibleimages. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Seymour, Gerald. The Collaborator. Copyright © 2009 Gerald Seymour. New York: The Over­look Press, 2011. Print.

Stampp, Kenneth M., Professor of American History at the University of California (Berkeley).
   The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. Vintage Books, 1955. Print.

Taylor, Andrew. The Scent of Death. Copyright © Andrew Taylor 2013. London: Harper­CollinsPublishers. Print.

Movies,