And so it was so bad that He decides that He is going to destroy everything and destroy this creation. So what we decided to do was to align Noah with that character arc and give Noah that understanding: He understands what man has done, he wants justice, and, over the course of the film, learns mercy. What’s nice about that is that is how I think Thomas Aquinas defined righteousness: a balance of justice and mercy.

Ari [Handel] and I always talked about it in terms of being a parent: If you are too just with a child you destroy them with strictness. If you’re too merciful you can spoil them. Finding that balance is what makes you a good parent. So that was an interesting character arc for us to see.

Maybe what made Noah righteous was that he mirrored, in some sense, God’s own heart about what was happening.

Sure. That’s another way of looking at it. And we completely connected that. Because really, Noah just follows whatever God tells him to do. So that led us to believe that maybe they were aligned, emotionally, you know? And that paid off for us when you get to the end of the story and [Noah] gets drunk. That was a huge thing; they didn’t teach us that in CCD either, did they? What do we do with this? How do we connect this with this understanding? For me, it was obvious that it was connected to survivor’s guilt or some kind of guilt about doing something wrong.

I mean, to get that drunk—and not just drunk, but it's the first mention of wine in the Bible, which is incredibly significant—but to get so drunk that you’re naked and have a falling out with your child and curse them. That, for some reason, was held onto. That’s part of the story that stayed in there for all time. That’s a huge clue to what this whole story is about.

I know you and Ari spent a great deal of time doing research on the biblical texts for the film. Do I also remember reading somewhere that when you were younger you attended yeshiva for a time?

Oh, no. That’s an old thing in Wikipedia that’s not really true.

I spent two days because it was a free room when I was in Israel [years ago] and somehow it got picked up that I was a yeshiva student. No. Far from it. I was a public-school kid in Brooklyn and I had a very, very basic Jewish education. It was more of a cultural thing than anything. Bagels and lox was my culture. But I’m more Brooklyn and New York than anything, in terms of who I am and what my identity is.

So when it comes to the biblical or theological study that you did for the film—

I think it’s more interesting when you look at not just the biblical but the mythical that you get away from the arguments about history and accuracy and literalism. That’s a much weaker argument, and it’s a mistake.

Because when you think about Icarus, you don’t talk about the feathers and the wax and how the wax attached to his body and how is that physically possible that he could fly with feathers on his arms. No. You’re talking about how he flew too high and was filled with hubris and it destroyed him. That’s the message and that’s the power. That’s power to have that idea. But when you’re talking about a pre-diluvian world—a pre-flood world—where people are living for millennia and centuries, where there were no rainbows, where giants and angels walked on the planet, where the world was created in seven days, where people were naked and had no shame, you’re talking about a universe that is very, very different from what we understand. And to portray that as realistic is impossible. You have to enter the fantastical. The Leviathan in the sea. It’s a different understanding of the world, and that’s OK. That’s not dangerous.