The Passion of Darkly Noon is an intriguing movie which made me question what it means to “spoil something good,” a quote from one of the characters, Callie. The movie starts off with the character, Darkly Noon who falls into an unconscious state after running for what one could image was a long time through a thick and treacherous forest. By the grace of God, a theme which the movie will further pursue, a humble local town boy picks up Darkly Noon and brings him to a friend’s home, Callie’s, in order to be nurtured back to full health. Compared to Darkly Noon, Callie is a free spirit. The movie will quickly inform us after Darkly Noon is able to speak again, facing his awkwardness in living at a “heathen’s” home that what he was running from was an assault on his religious compound which faced similar ends to Waco. His parents were shot there after the power was cut and the compound was invaded. During the chaos, Darkly Noon escape. Within the compound, it can be deduced that extreme religious ideals were held amongst the followers of the strange religious sect.
Callie, though the one who brought Noon back to full health, is seen with a mixed perception. Following with Klein’s logic, her place within Noon’s life as a caretaker would be her good object part, but her identity as a religious heathen who invites him to strip nude and enjoy the feeling of a mud bath on his skin along with her, he considers the “bad” part-object. This confusion between the twin-perceptions he has of Callie are the dividing forces which cause Noon to self-destruct like a bird whose wings can’t agree with what direction they want to go in. It doesn’t help that Noon, despite Callie’s “perverted” ways, which are really just of a girl trying to enjoy life, has a husband. It isn’t until later on that the husband is introduced. Callie fears he may never come back. It isn’t clear if he’s on a business trip making coffins or just wants to clear some headspace for himself. Regardless, this gives time for Noon to fantasize a life which he and Callie share. Obviously, he is very much attracted to her. He desires to possess her same freedom, so he projects it onto her as a “bad part,” allowing him to avoid facing the reality of not all his desires being aligned with the religious doctrine that he grew up with.
Eventually, when Callie’s boyfriend Clay comes back from his trip, Noon begins to fall apart. He starts to envy Callie even more, lusting over her from a difference, envying the sexuality she and Clay share, something he can never possess due to his harsh religious laws. Clay is a mute since birth. He communicates with Noon via a series of sounds used to direct him as he works alongside him in the carpentry shop making coffins. Clay making coffins reminded me of Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ who turned wood into crosses for his fellow Jews. I’ll talk more on this later. As time goes on, Noon quickly begins to learn that what Callie said by “we want you to become a member of our family” was less of an equal, but more of a sun. Noon lives alone in the attic of a barn, taking orders from Clay, whilst his master reaps the pleasure of the one he desires most. It is no shock that Noon’s immature emotional state, due to being raised in an isolated religious compound, will soon turn towards violence and aggression as he finds these new feelings hard to navigate.
This vitriol will be catalyzed by Noon’s acquaintance with the “women in the woods” by the name of Roxy during one of his dramatic storm-outs from the house, which is a lot like his religious compound due to the isolated state. No wonder why he has similar claustrophobic feelings. Must be hard to move on. Anyways, Roxy tells Noon that Callie is a witch who seduced her husband, causing him to have a heart attack from it. She then took possession of her son and drove her out of the house, taking everything away from her. Filled with angst by the news of Callie being not exactly what he seems, Noon arrives back at the house, fired up more than ever before. Callie quickly denounces what Roxy said, telling noon to not listen to her, that Roxy’s husband raped her and that she’s a bitter woman. To Noon, he becomes very confused. While he empathizes with Callie and thinks what she says makes sense, he still feels he’s under the same witchy snare that the bible-thumping Roxy says she put on her husband.
I must also add that during Roxy and Noon’s conversation, she brought up how her hunting dog would bite too hard down on birds, so she began wrapping desiccated bird corpses with “barbed wire” to soften his bite. This directly inspires Noon to begin wrapping himself with barbed wire, bleeding himself, both as a release from his sexual frustration, aggression and a means to atone for falling under the “witch’s curse” which is just another form of sexual frustration in a way. It also mirrors Christ’s crown of thorns due to how Noon perceives himself as a righteous religious figure.
Before this blog post gets too long and veers more on summary than analysis, I will conclude saying that Roxy’s suicide is what pushes Noon into the proverbial “deep end”. Noon returns to the place, a cave, where he shared his first sweet moment with Callie, but when he was about to express his affection for her, she quickly caught whiff and said, “don’t spoil a good thing”. Doesn’t the Bible say something about pursuing another guy’s girl? Surely that’s worse than smoking cigarettes and pre-marital intimacy. To seal the deal, when Noon returns to the cave, he paints himself as a Vietnam war-painted soldier, a lot like Willard from Apocalypse Now painting himself before entering the “heart of darkness” where morals no longer apply. The irony of Roxy telling Noon to kill her to break the curse before she commits suicide, as if that is righteous, is what is killing me. She is the witch of the woods, Roxy! She quite literally lives amongst the dark trees, casting spells (firing warning shots) at the same family she believes to be under Callie’s curse. She even goes to say that murder is righteous, one of the most obvious tenants of the Bible which are denounced, including suicide, which in Catholicism is a straight shot to hell.
In a fit of rage, Noon ambushes the home in red paint, barbed wire exposed, the same barbed wire mutilation that got him kicked out of the house in fear. He carries a carpentry two sides blade, a lot like a sword, and wields it in a way St. Michael might. During the onslaught, he ironically dies at the same hand which saved him, the little town boy, who also had a crush on Callie, but could regulate himself unlike Noon. He even tried to save Noon, telling him to lay back, play it cool and realize that Callie’s true love was for Clay. Unlike Roxy, the town boy, Jude is the voice of reason, whose logic departs from Noon like dust in the wind. Maybe, when stooped up in irrationality, irrationality is all that one may find.
Inklings of Epiphany 
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