NOAH

Reviewed by Patrick Gibbs


GRADE: A

Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Emma Watson, Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone, Logan Lerman,
Written by Darrren Aronofsky and Ari Handel
Directed by Darren Aronofsky

When you hear that someone is making a modern biblical epic, the name Russell Crowe is hardly a surprise name to be tossed around. To quote Chris Rock, "If your movie is set in the past, you best be casting Russell's ass." Grand, old style Hollywood epics like GLADIATOR are where he seems most at home (though I will always maintain that CINDERELLA MAN is actually his overall most endearing performance.). But when picking a director for a Bible story, especially "Noah's Ark," names like Ridley Scott or Mel Gibson may immediately spring to mind, but Darren Aronofsky is one name that decidedly does not.

The director of such heavy, R-Rated and explicit art house fare as Requiem For A Dream and Black Swan is not exactly the most Sunday School friendly presence. The only thing that really seems obvious about the match of director to material is that if there is anyone who could unflinchingly portray a human race so far gone that it seemed justified to wipe them out, it may be Aronofsky. But this is a PG-13. What's more, it's a $125 million dollar blockbuster wannabe. What was the studio thinking? What was the director thinking?

The answer is as complex as the movie itself.

The film begins with, well . . . the beginning, quoted straight from the bestselling book. "There was nothing, not even light." Then it tells the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, of Cain and Abel, and the mark put upon Cain as he committed the first murder.  Familiar, right? But wait, there's more: it also tells the story of "The Watchers," a group of fallen angels who were cast out of heaven for taking pity on Adam and Eve and trying to help them. The Watchers were trapped inside the earth itself, and took the form of rock giants. Imagine if Optimus Prime and "The Thing" from Fantastic Four both had liasons with Treebeard's sister and you couldn't quite figure out which one was the father. Actually, don't, that's disturbing.

Noah (Russell Crowe) is a good man, descended from Seth, and perhaps the last religious man on the planet. Noah follows the teachings of "The Creator," and along with his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), raises his children to do so as well. He also raises an adopted daughter, Iila, whom he found dying of a stomach wound which would leave her barren when she grows into a beautiful young woman played by Emma Watson.

One day, Noah has a vision: the creator is going to destroy the world. Confused by this vision, he goes to speak to the only man he can trust, his grandfather, Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins.). As the two converse and discuss the designs of the creator, Noah has a further revelation that the destruction will come in the form of a flood, destroying all mankind. Naturally, Noah immediately becomes a boating enthusiast and starts plans to build an ark. But it's not long before we meet our villain, Tubal-Cain (played by Ray Winstone, because Edward G. Robinson refused to return Aronofsky's phone calls on the grounds that he has been dead for 40 years.).  Tubal-Cain is the would be king of the people of Cain, and he believes the creator has abandoned man, and therefore they must take care of themselves and do as they feel. This wickedness is seen mostly in the form of violence against animals (Noah and his family are vegetarians), but we also see women being traded as slaves, and a general willingness to kill anything that gets in Tubal-Cain's way. But when he hears that Noah is building an ark, he wants a reserved seat, just in case, but Noah's faithful rock giant friends make good junkyard dogs. (Seriously. Rock giants. I am not making this up.). Tubal-Cain and his people leave, and Noah and Naameh get in a fight when Noah refuses to let his sons go out and get themselves wives to take with them on the journey. Noah has seen that evil lies in all men, including himself and his family. He concludes that it is the Creator's will that he save the animals, who are innocent because they still live as they did in the garden, but that eventually man must perish from the earth. Noah's oldest son, Shem, is okay with this, because he has a hot but barren girlfriend (a must for any man going on the last cruise in existence), but the next in line, Ham (Logan Lerman, of the Percy Jackson films) is pretty upset by the idea of being sentenced to a life of loneliness and . . . well, you know, loneliness.

Of course, when the rain comes down, the floods come up. The family takes to the high seas, the skipper brave and sure that his harsh insistence on not letting anyone else on board, despite plenty of room, is what must be done. But a resentful Ham just might be hiding a stowaway.

This is certainly not for everyone, but it plays much better than it sounds like it would. In fact, much of the film is genuinely mesmerizing.  But at times it becomes as lost as as giant block of wood floating through a deluge. This is unquestionably an art film, yet it has some jaw dropping, overblown Hollywood blockbuster elements. When you say that this is a version of Noah's Ark where the bad guy is firing a flare gun at rock giants, it sounds like you're talking about Michael Bay, not Aronofsky. But this really is an Aronofsky film all the way, for good or bad. It manages to be thought provoking, silly, epic, intimate, profound, inane, brilliant, and stupid all at the same time, and the thing is, for the most part, THAT ACTUALLY WORKED FOR ME. Let's face it: this is a pretty Hollywood story, and in the end, this does not stray nearly as far from the source material as you may think while watching it. Honestly, right down to Jennifer Connelly being in it, the film I would most compare it to is Ang Lee's Hulk, in terms of a deep, thoughtful artist trying to go full Hollywood while remaining true to his artistic nature and as a result making a movie that really works for a certain crowd of people and leaves everyone else utterly puzzled and angry.

The film is at its definitely at its best when it is going the more arsty route, and in particular a sequence where Noah tells the story of the creation and the fall of Cain to his family to explain why they must do what they are doing, is beautifully done and will likely be the most memorable sequence in any film this year, equally effective for believers and non believers alike. Aronofsky uses the iconic biblical tale to explore the relationship between man and God in any time period, and captures the feelings of gratefulness, humility, confusion, resentment, supplication, trust, judgement, forgiveness, and love that come with living a devoutly religious life, and that is no small feat. It's not just about one family's tumultuous journey through the ocean while trying to trust in God, it's about the journey we all take through life trying to do the same.

The Watchers work far better than they have any right to (and are not a completely made up element: they come from Jewish legend and the non canonical Book of Enoch) and I probably would have just gone with them if it wasn't for the added Hollywood touch of the evil stowaway to provide a fight scene that seems straight out of Die Hard. In addition, while it is clearly understood that Aronofsky wants to set the story in such an undetermined time and place that the word "anachronism" is a bit hard to apply, the welding mask and the home pregnancy test strain credibility (again, it sounds worse than it is, especially the latter.).

The performances are strong all around, with Crowe in top form, with a fascinating take on Noah as alternately the lovably sympathetic prophet carrying a heavy burden, or the heartless and dangerously egocentric religious fanatic, depending on how the characters see him at different points throughout the film.  Hopkins makes a delightful Methuselah and Watson steals the whole movie with a heart felt monologue toward the end that provides the most spiritually uplifting moment, and her chemistry with Crowe is undeniable. Logan Lerman, a very subtle and natural actor who had the misfortune of giving a terrible performance in Paul W.S. Anderson's dreadful Three Musketeers,  is saddled with some of the most compelling moments but also some of the silliest, but his earnestness makes it work.  Fairing worst is Ray Winstone as the requisite baddie, which unfortunately is becoming a paragraph I could cut and paste into almost any review these days. As usual for an Aronofsky film, the score by Clint Mansell and cinematography by Matthew Libatique are both stunningly gorgeous, if not terribly subtle.

My final opinion on this one is hard to solidify, and I'll probably jump around a lot on what I thought. In the end, I believe that anyone who completely embraces the film as truly great or utterly dismisses it as terrible is making a hasty judgement that is hard to back up artistically and is more likely based on whatever end of the religious spectrum they are on. But that being said, it could actually go either way which side goes with which conclusion, which is one of the biggest reasons I will not be able to get this movie out of my head for some time. Aronofsky's films can be accused of being many things. Forgettable is not one of them.

Noah is rated PG-13, but should probably be a light R for violence and adult themes. This is not a movie to take your kids to for a number of reasons, but most of all because it is just so heavy.