Since I've been thinking about the subject, and Bunni helpfully referenced the very story I was thinking about, I'm going to dwell on it a bit. The subject being the figure of Abraham, and more specifically God's demand that Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac (or Ismail for the Islamically inclined but maybe more about that later). What follows is part of a screenplay I wrote in grad school. I've always wanted to direct a Biblical epic, or perhaps a Biblical anti-epic. The interesting thing for me being the relation between the Biblical text(s) and the films inspired by it. It seems to me the relationship between text and film is often tenuous at best, though I should admit I don't enjoy those films enough to really study them. I got to wondering what it might look like should someone try and be "faithful" to the text itself. Would it be possible to use the text as a model, to do with film, or in this case with a screenplay, what the Bible does? Now I know there are too many pitfalls in that question to even begin naming them. The underlying assumption on my part is that most folks don't read the text itself very closely. So what would happen if a (would be) screenwriter tried to do just that. After the screenplay I've included a couple excerpts from a Q&A. I'd be interested in your comments, not simply on the success or failure of the screenplay, but also on the story itself.
The screenplay: The Binding of Isaac
FADE IN:
As blackness slowly fades to the first gray light of dawn we hear the masculine
voice of:
THE NARRATOR
And it came to pass that God did tempt Abraham,
and he said "Abraham!" And Abraham replied
"Here I am."
Cut to a tight CLOSEUP shot of the dark, opaque eye of an animal. This lasts just a second
as the camera pulls back WIDER and we see the eye is that of a donkey standing patiently. The narrator continues over the shot of the donkey:
THE NARRATOR
And God said to Abraham "Take your son, your only
son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah,
and offer him there as a burnt offering on the mountain
that I will show you."
As the narrator speaks a man, ABRAHAM, walks into the scene, he is carrying a saddle. His face is weathered, his expression resolute. He is not a young man but he has a certain imposing presence; he has the look of a man who knows what he must do and will waste no time.
PANNING SLOWLY as he walks toward the donkey and begins to affix the saddle to its back.
Cut to a CLOSE shot of a log. An axe comes swinging into the shot from the top and violently cleaves the log in two.
WIDER--Abraham places the two pieces of wood on top of a small pile of chopped wood. Dissolve to:
A harsh landscape; it looks blasted by the sun which shines brightly but is beginning to hang low in the sky as the afternoon makes its way toward night. In the distance four figures and a donkey bearing a load on its back walk slowly but steadily toward the horizon. FADE TO BLACK and we hear the narrator's voice:
THE NARRATOR
On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place
far away.
Cut to a WIDE shot. Abraham stands with his back to us. In the distance is a dark mountain.
As we cut to a TIGHT shot of Abraham unpacking the mule we hear the narrator:
THE NARRATOR
And Abraham said to his young men "Stay here with
the donkey; the boy and I will go there and worship
then we will return.
As the two young men stand silently by, Abraham straps the bundle of wood to ISAAC's back. Isaac is a young man who bears a resemblance to his father Abraham but does not have the determined bearing that distinguishes his father.
Abraham attaches a long sheathed knife to his belt and takes a torch from one of the young men.
A TRACKING SHOT follows Abraham and Isaac as they walk, the mountain looming before them in the distance. As they walk, we hear the narrator:
THE NARRATOR
Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And Abraham
replied “Here I am, my son.” Isaac said “The fire and the
wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
The mountain rises before them larger now…it seems to block out the sun. Abraham and Isaac walk in shadow.
THE NARRATOR
Abraham replied to Isaac, “God himself will provide the
lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”
Cut to a CLOSE shot of Abraham placing the wood on a makeshift altar of large stones and rocks. Pull back for a WIDE shot of the altar, which resembles nothing so much as a funeral pyre. We can now see, to the left of the altar a figure, Isaac, laying on the ground, bound tightly with rope.
Move in to a TIGHT shot of Isaac, his eyes open wide. His arms and legs are bound to his body and he cannot move them. His head is not bound but he says nothing.
We move in to a CLOSEUP of Isaac’s eyes. The shot moves in until his eyes fill up the entire frame. Dissolve to:
ISAAC’s Point of View. Abraham stands over us, his eyes betray nothing. He bends down into the shot.
Cut to a WIDE shot of the altar. Abraham carrying Isaac’s bound form in his arms walks to the altar. He lays Isaac down on the wood. The light is dim…we cannot tell whether it is day or night.
TIGHT shot of Abraham standing over Isaac on the altar. He removes the knife from its sheath on his belt. He raises the knife high over his head ready to strike.
As we FADE TO BLACK we hear the voice of the narrator:
THE NARRATOR
But the angel of the Lord called to him from
Heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!”
And he replied, “Here I am.”
DISSOLVE to:
a tight CLOSEUP of the dark opaque eye of an animal. We hold this shot as the narrator continues:
THE NARRATOR
The angel said “Do not lay your hand on the
boy or do anything to him; for now I know that
you fear God, since you have not withheld your
son, your only son, from me.
The camera pulls back WIDER and we see that the eye is that of a ram trapped in a thicket. Its horns are entangled in a vine of some sort. It struggles briefly but cannot free itself.
DISSOLVE to:
A CLOSEUP of the same eye, lifeless now.
DISSOLVE to:
A TIGHT shot of the ram on the altar. The wood it lies on is on fire and the flames are beginning to engulf the ram.
THE NARRATOR
So Abraham called that place “The Lord will
Provide”: and it is said to this day, “On the
mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”
Black smoke begins to billow forth from the altar.
THE NARRATOR
The angel of the Lord called to Abraham a
second time from heaven and said “By myself
have I sworn, says the Lord: because you have
done this, and have not withheld your son,
your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will
make your offspring as numerous as the stars of
heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore.
The flames have engulfed the ram. Its carcass is barely visible through the flames, which leap higher and higher into the dark sky.
THE NARRATOR
And your offspring shall possess the gate of
their enemies, and by your offspring shall all
the nations of the earth gain blessing for them-
selves, because you have obeyed my voice.”
Fire. We can see nothing but fire.
FADE to:
A WIDE shot. The young men who were left behind are in the foreground. Abraham is approaching in the distance. He is alone.
DISSOLVE to:
A WIDE shot from above. Three small figures and a donkey walking toward the horizon in a harsh landscape. The sun shines high overhead.
FADE TO WHITE
_______________________________________________________
The Q&A
Q: The images of animals in your script brings Bunuel to mind. The burning carcass on the altar is reminiscent of the horse carcass on the piano in Un Chien Andalou, the film he made with Dali.
trick: I hadn’t thought about that, but I can see it now that you mention it. But to be honest I was not trying to reference anyone in the writing of this scene. In fact I started out thinking that I would be as faithful to the original text as I could possibly be. I wanted to see if I could think of a way to visually communicate what it is about that story that I find so compelling. Of course that scene turned out to be just the first scene in an entire screenplay but I didn’t know that when I first wrote it. I was just trying to do justice to the text, to offer a faithful translation of sorts.
Q: Would you describe your final product as a faithful translation?
trick: Well I discovered the typical problems that face any translator as well as some new ones that were unique to this specific context. You are faced with the problem of being faithful to either the letter of the text or the spirit. Or at least the spirit of the story, the moral if you will, as you may have originally been taught it. What I found was that the actual words of the text sometimes contradict and challenge our commonly held assumptions about the text. If I tried to be entirely faithful to the letter of the text I’m not sure I could have produced a coherent script.
Q: So you’re saying the Bible is a little stranger than we sometimes prefer to think?
trick: Yes. It is often seems just plain weird and sometimes a little disturbing. I think that’s why there is this desperate need to interpret it. We need to make sense of it, to force it to work in ways that we are comfortable with. But if we get carried away with this approach to the text, forcing it into our moral categories, we cheat ourselves of some of the wonder of this text. Because regardless of what we may or may not think of it theologically, it is a wonderful text. It even seems dishonest to call it “a text.” It is so intertextual, there are just so many different things going on between those covers, it’s no wonder that so many different communities could claim their roots in this text, because it is really a very diverse collection of texts.
Q: So despite your professed intentions in writing the screenplay, you are clearly not a literalist when it comes to interpretation.
trick: I don’t think anyone is. I think that’s impossible. There is no understanding that is free of interpretation. The Bible is not transparent. I think that attempts to make these claims about reading the Bible literally are usually more about authority and thinly concealed relations of power. Both authority within a community and within the text. Which parts of the text carry more weight, and which get excluded? Usually those which contradict or resist the readings we want to impose.
Q: You seem to imply that the text cannot be read without some sort of ideological framework.
trick: Well there is always a framework of some sort. Everyone occupies cultural and political locations whether we are conscious of these positions or not. I think the more conscious we are of these commitments, and they are not always commitments we choose, the more able we are to resist the power they have over us to shape and form us. But we can never escape them entirely, we can never simply encounter the text in some sort of value-free vacuum. There is always context. But there are more and less violent ways of reading the text. I definitely don’t want to imply that we have some sort of interpretive free for all working. I do think the text can resist us if we give it half a chance. So even though I knew it wasn’t entirely possible I wanted to see what would happen if I tried to be faithful to the text as it was, to try and offer a cinematic translation of the story that really paid attention to the words of the story.
Q: Let’s talk more about that. Because you could clearly argue that you made decisions that one might disagree with while pointing to the text itself as evidence. For instance, only the narrator speaks. Isaac and Abraham never speak for themselves.
trick: Yes, you’ve hit the biggest nail on the head I think. But do Abraham and Isaac really speak for themselves in the text? It would seem so, after all we’re always reading “Abraham said,” and “Isaac said,” and so on. But who is telling us this? We tend to forget about the narrator, he is the invisible character, but he is there in the text. After all someone is telling us what Abraham and Isaac said. So I tried to demonstrate that by making the only speaking character the narrator. But he speaks only when the text indicates direct speech. We have to take his word for it, just like in the text where we rely on him for everything. As a screenwriter you have to use pictures to communicate too, so the narrator has a more limited role than in the text. Or perhaps the screenwriter assumes the identity of the narrator in a certain sense by giving a visual form to the words of the text.
Q: What about character development? The text relies almost entirely on the action to provide information about the characters. Yet you have to be more descriptive in order to give the characters visual life.
trick: Well I try to keep what little description I offer tied to the actions of the characters. But there is no denying that there are choices involved. The text is not always of help. There are gaps to be filled. But I tried to be conservative. Which is easier to do on paper than on film. Casting, for instance, would be very tricky. As would set design. I tried to be appropriately vague in that regard but when it came time to shoot there would be no way to leave those ambiguities completely intact. I tried to minimize those problems by focusing on the action: saddling the donkey, chopping the wood, the walking …
Q: Placing Isaac on the altar…
trick: Yes.
Q: But we do not actually see the binding take place. Why?
trick: A very good question. This is one of the most intriguing places in the text for me. The text itself describes this in the flattest possible way. But that’s why its brilliant…it’s such a charged scene and we have nothing to go on but our imagination. How did Isaac react to being bound? Surely he knew something strange was up. Was he as trusting of Abraham as Abraham was of God? Or was he absolutely terrified? We don’t know and we have to fill in the blanks for ourselves. There are so many possibilities. If I had depicted the actual binding I would have had to immediately limit the power of it by imposing just one of those possibilities. Which is what you see in films like David and Bathsheba where we find out that Bathsheba really is a seductress. The text doesn’t let us off the hook so easily and I wanted to capture that.
Q: There is still a certain violence in the very image of Isaac bound and helpless.
trick: Sure, but I think it’s there in the text. Abraham does bind Isaac after all. Do we imagine that it is a cheerful sort of thing where everyone knows that it’s just God’s little game and everything will be ok? Play acting essentially? I personally find that a troubling reading, but I think it is still an entirely possible reading given the way I write the scene in the screenplay. There’s no way it can be entirely free of violence. You could certainly write it in such a way as to amplify the horror involved, but I don’t think I did that. Nor did I downplay that aspect of the story. It maintains a certain ambiguity that I hope is faithful to the text.
Q: Well…it has to be asked. What happens to Isaac? Why isn’t he with Abraham when he returns?
trick: I have no idea! We know he does not get sacrificed but the text does not say “they returned,” or “Abraham and Isaac returned.” It says “Abraham returned.” No mention of Isaac. This is one of those things that might get overlooked if we read casually, but when you have to try and translate, whether into another language or format, you notice these things. Are they accidental or intentional? My decision to stick with the text on this one, to be literal so to speak, is sort of a midrashic decision. It invites all sorts of speculation.
Q: One last question about your interpretive decisions. There’s clearly lots of symbolism working here…the animals, the light and shadow, the eyes. What might it mean and how do you justify it being there at all?
trick: Well, the lighting is a choice that has to be made if the story is to be filmed. The text tells us nothing. Is it night or day? What time is it? We don’t know, but how we picture the scene definitely changes depending on how we answer these questions. So I tried to answer them but I did indeed have to take some creative license in that regard. I do intend the light to work on a symbolic level, to relate to the ethical ambiguities of the story. But it’s subtle, I hope. As for the eyes, well it’s just a visual theme to pull things together and it is probably the one place where my retelling most clearly bears my own artistic stamp. The symbolism of the animals is right there in the text itself. The ram is Isaac’s effigy. They are both inescapably bound…neither can refuse the situation. The ending, the lingering shot of the fire growing more and more intense is intended to force our attention on the concept of the sacrifice. It is so foreign to us that we might otherwise tend to simply let it go by without mention. I wanted to force the issue.
