Noah (2014) – Movie Review

20140403_1300This film is an example of taking a director known for stylistic uniqueness and independent flair, and giving him $100 million and asking him to make an epic film. And not just any epic, but an epic about a story they have been fascinated with since youth.

While not a masterpiece, Noah is an incredible film that asks very serious questions and, while we all know how it ends, it keeps us guessing about how it will get there.

Everyone is familiar with the story of Noah and his ark. It’s pretty hard to spoil the story of Noah: the ark floats for forty days and forty nights and when a dove arrives carrying a twig in its beak, the flood has ended and Noah and his family return to the earth. But there is about one page devoted to the story of Noah in the Bible; Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream) and his fellow writers have filled in between the cracks and made the story epic in scope, loud and big and grand, and at many times personal and deeply questioning.

In detail: after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, they had three sons, Seth, Abel, and Cain. Cain kills Abel, and goes off on his own; he finds followers, and they wreak havoc on the earth and make an industrial society (industrial meaning wood and smoke). Seth’s people, meanwhile, worship the earth and continue to follow the word of God. Needless to say, Noah is descended from Seth, and when he is sent (graphic) visions of the world being flooded, he decides to build and ark to harbor two of every animal…though whether he should save himself and his family is called into question.

The film presents and interesting internal conflict that all the characters—from hero to villain—wrestle with: is the word of god expected to be taken literally, or are they more like suggestions? Noah wonders whether humans should be eradicated from the earth, or whether they were meant to survive; when he turns to the heavens and asks god to send him another vision, there is just silence. It presents a fascinating ethical question that is subtle at first, but as the film progresses it becomes the dominating force behind every characters’ actions.

As can be predicted with a live-action film about a Biblical catastrophe, the film is grim. During the flood, one can hear the screams outside the ark of people drowning. Bodies float by and are flung in the storm. During fights, people heads and cracked and people are trampled violently, with bone-shattering sounds, underfoot.

This grimness extends to the main character of Noah, portrayed brilliantly by Russell Crowe. He shows us someone who is conflicted inside by what he is being forced to do, and then he has to face the consequences of his actions; this is not the hero we see in the Bible, one-sided and simple, but a man torn apart, just as Cain was, by the demands put upon him. And one can argue that it pretty much destroys the man Noah is. There are several decisions he makes in the film—one especially—that practically sets the audience against him. Again, it shows that humans have the freedom of choice: are we inherently good or evil, or is it a mixture of both, and we choose who we are?

The film is full of great actors, and they help the sometimes bumpy script along to the end. The film does drag at times, and at other times there are sequences that feel rushed (the building of the ark literally takes place in seconds). There is also questionable CGI: many of the animals look too artificial, and while the water effects are awesome to behold, we never forget we’re watching computers at work.

Thankfully, the film is able to support its hefty weight, only dropping a few rocks (CGI, some pacing) at times. The big questions at the center of the film are airtight and expertly handled; the acting is grand; and the take on the legendary story is unique enough to know that this is a Darren Aronofsky film (I mean really: it’s a memorable image that the forbidden fruit is a peach-like thing that beats like a heart).

And as a last note: I mentioned a lot of the older people in the theater were not entertained by what they saw represented on screen. It was actually interesting to see how, in the real world, the word of god would be a very nasty, grisly thing to watch. This was something I knew in the back of my head and expected going in; I’m not sure if everyone else expected a cartoon-like, Sunday School version of the story.

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For More Information Visit:
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http://www.movieweb.com/movie/noah
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1959490/combined

Author: John Worth