NOAH, my movie review. . . But first--
You may have already judged this film and you've never seen it!
Like many of its critics, you think you know what you're going to see and
you've dismissed it.
Now, I ask you--what in the world kind of person does that?
Well, I'll tell you. A close-minded fundamentalist! Or, is that redundant?
If you just want the review skip down to the part that starts with
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Otherwise, here is my set-up to the review:
Let's start with the so-called "accuracy" issue surrounding the film.
You want facts?
Here's one: the Bible contains not one, but TWO versions of the story of NOAH. The two stories are utterly dissonant with each other. In fact, they are irreconcilable.
So, don't be so damned pompous about accuracy!
I have little doubt people sat in the theater with their arms crossed with an internal dialogue saying, "Well, let's just see how much they get right."
As I was filing out of the theater a husband turned to his wife and asked, "Well, what did you think?" His wife thoughtfully responded, "Well, it was a work of fiction."
???
Next, movies are not newspapers or encyclopedias. At best, they are an art form and, at worst a distracting waste of time. NOAH is not the latter.
NOAH is as close as I've seen to a genuinely artistic and dramatic success in dealing with "untouchable" sacred "truth."
Darren Aronofsky has achieved something extraordinary.
He has taken on and enlarged a mythos as old as any story told among mankind.
What is mythos?
It is how a culture teaches itself a lesson of larger truth impossible to understand unless it is told as a true morality tale.
The story of NOAH confronts humanity:
If earth is our home and every man is our brother--what responsibility falls upon us?
If we fail in brotherhood and stewardship, what is the ultimate consequence?
For the biblical story the question is asked, wouldn't there be a reckoning?
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I walked into the movie theater last night for only two reasons and neither of those two reasons was to see a silly storybook rendition account of a man on a boat with two giraffes standing behind him and a rainbow in the background.
If that is what 'floats your boat' you need to grow up a little.
First, I will see any movie Russell Crowe is in because, like Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, Richard Harris and Terence Stamp, Crowe has extraordinary gravitas, commitment and power in inhabiting a role with dynamism.
Second, Darren Aronofsky is an American director whose films are surreal, disturbing and unforgettable. They are artistically arresting, visually amazing and evocatively memorable.
Aronofsky attended Harvard as a social anthropologist and film maker.
He is a SERIOUS person deeply interested in the human animal as well as the craft of exploring what makes us tick on screen.
Aronofsky was born 'culturally Jewish' so the story of Noah has been with him for a long time:)
As a young man he backpacked his way through Europe and the Middle East.
He trained as a field biologist. He cares about the environment on many levels.
His first film, Pi, was financed by $100 donations from family and friends.
He raised $60,000 and won the Sundance Film Festival award as Best Director
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The Aronofsky version of NOAH has remarkable power and suspense!
What? Suspense? How is that possible?
Everybody knows this story and how it ends, right?
Well--no!
Aronofsky's NOAH is a real person with deep feelings for his heritage and responsibility for his family and a humble reckoning of stewardship bestowed by the Creator.
It may sound impossible, but Russell Crowe offers his best acting portrayal of his entire career! His Noah is a flesh and blood, thinking and feeling honest man living in a society gone mad.
The world of Noah has been abandoned by its Creator, largely in disgust for the ruination they've wrought. Crowe's Noah is troubled by vivid dreams of a human holocaust so vast he's compelled to seek out his grandfather, Methuselah for counsel.
Aronofsky's version of the back story leading up to the destruction of mankind has a profound resonance with actual words of scripture brought to life most vividly with a Lord of the Rings epic sensibility.
We encounter what's left of a band of angels who tried to help human beings after THE FALL. (These are called WATCHERS in the Bible.) Their Creator has banished them and nothing much remains of their spiritual glory inasmuch as they've become petrified distortions, giants and golems.
So righteous is Noah's indignation and the worthiness of his cause, it is the WATCHERS who do most of the labor building the floating habitat--the ark from a forest planted by a seed from Eden given to Noah by his grandfather.
These little touches and flourishes may well drive Bible-thumpers wild--but--I have to tell you I think they are brilliant riffs of genius in making this wholly unlikely tale come to life and breathe fresh air.
We come to know Noah's family intimately in character building scenes of very real struggles to survive, find love and create a future with some promise of happiness.
Russell Crowe
Jennifer Connelly
Ray Winstone
Emma Watson
Anthony Hopkins
Each a compelling force of nature in an acting coup the likes of which you probably haven't seen in a long time.
Noah is practically driven insane by his hardships, the burden of responsibility, his shame for humanity's violent depredation, as well as personal failure as a species. His love for the life of innocent animals and the Earth itself would put Greenpeace to shame.
This movie held me in thrall. On the edge of my seat to the very end--I couldn't believe this story could be told in such a way as to generate anxiety, suspense, and empathy--not actually knowing what would happen next!
Impossible, you say?
I say---do yourself a huge favor--stow your prejudices and GO SEE THIS FILM.
The music delivers something I also didn't expect: a non-Hollywood underscore which lives and breathes with the drama in such a way the audience feels the ancient atmosphere and the titanic conflict is happening moment to moment.
What a remarkable achievement artistically and dramatically!
Ray Winstone as Tubal-Cain is phenomenal as the king who killed Noah's father to steal his property and who embodies an almost Ralph Waldo Emerson philosophy of the greatness of man. He is a pivotal character for an Ayn Rand figure of individualism carried to corrupt extremes.
The movie gives a thrilling vision of how men who think they've been abandoned by their Creator without any moral compass will do what is right in their
own eyes, thus revealing their own character. This is a most thoughtful exploration of more than an old story. It is a magnifying glass for humanity, ecology and morality.