Noah

Year:  2014

Filming:  Color

Length: 137 minutes

Genre:  Action/Biblical/Disaster/Drama

Maturity:  PG-13 (for intense thematic elements and some sexual innuendos)

Cast:  Russell Crowe (Noah), Jennifer Connolly (Naameh), Ray Winstone (Tubal-Caine), Anthony Hopkins (Methuselah), Emma Watson (Ila), Logan Lerman (Ham), Douglas Booth (Shem), Leo McHugh Carroll (Japheth), Madison Davenport (Na’el), Nick Nolte (Samyaza), Mark Margolis (Magog), Adam Griffith (Adam), Ariane Rinehart (Eve)

Director:  Darren Aronofsky

Personal Rating:  2 Stars

***

   

    Where do I begin in my analysis of this newbie Biblical blockbuster, which has elicited ecstatic adulation and equally fervent cat-calls of disdain? Well, I suppose as good a place as any would be the rock monsters helping build the ark. Of course, the Cockney stow-away wouldn’t be a bad beginning either. Or perhaps we could talk about the narcotic berry juice and Noah’s fire-throwing machine. And then there is the Geiko car insurance salesman Serpent in the Garden of Eden. We’ll cover all of the above, and some.

    The story opens somewhere at the dawn of human history, after the fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. The descendents of Seth continue to keep their covenant with the Creator and maintain their role as stewards of Creation as veggie-loving gatherers, while the descendents of Caine have become blood-thirsty meat-eaters. After young Noah’s father is murdered by said-carnivorous-types, it is believed that all the descendents of Seth are officially kaput. But the lad eats his greens and grows up, turning into a prehistoric version of Russell Crowe and getting hitched to the long-suffering Naameh, played by Jennifer Connolly.

       Together they have three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and adopt a daughter named Ila, who was wounded by marauders as a child and is believed to be unable to conceive. Nevertheless, as the children grow into young adults, Shem and Ila fall in love, and it seems that they intend to get married even if they will be unable to have children of their own. All this is fine and dandy, until Noah begins having strange prophetic dreams about a great flood which will destroy the earth. In order to be further enlightened as to why he is having these dreams and what he should do about them, he decides to seek out his grandfather, the ancient Methuselah played by an equally ancient Anthony Hopkins.

     Along the way, he and his family encounter some rock monsters (no, I’m serious, let say it again…) rock monsters who apparently used to be angels called “Watchers”, until they tried to help Man after the fall in the Garden of Eden. This for some inexplicable reason they angered the Creator and were transformed into talkative craters who now have a chance to redeem themselves by helping Noah and his family…somehow! Still following this…? Good!

      Anyway, Methuselah gives Noah some narcotic berry juice, which causes him to have a few psychedelic visions to help interpret his dreams (although the possibility of it just causing more confusion is high…like high!). Nevertheless, he comes to conclusion that the world of men is indeed about to be punished, and that he is supposed to build an ark in order to save the animal life of the planet, which had done no wrong since the Fall. He also figures that he will be giving humanity a new start as well, with his family to start all over again. Fortuitously, the rock monsters are ready and willing to be of assistance in building the ark as Noah oversees preparations for the future 40-day-cruise. But there is trouble in paradise.

     For one thing, Noah starts getting progressively anti-human, because of all the corruption he sees in the camp of Caine’s descendents. He even magnifies the flaws of his family, and finally decides that the Creator really wants for all of humanity to die out in this flood after all, and leave only the animals the keep the balance of the great circle of life. Of course, this decision on the part of the patriarch is a tad traumatic for the rest of the family, who he agrees should be able to survive, but only because Ila is barren and therefore unable to continue reproducing the species. Ham, is forced to leave behind his new-found girl-friend when the flood waters start to rise, takes all this rather to heart.

    However, Naameh teams up with Methuselah and they cook up something of a cure of Ila so she will be able to conceive, enabling the human race to continue. Just before the waters start rising, Ila and Shem have a fling in the woods, and she becomes pregnant. But there are more pressing concerns, as the Cockney-accented Tubal-Caine, one of the chiefs of the evil meat-eaters, leads his hoards to destroy the ark. But never fear…rock monsters are here! And after a massive CGI-packed space-opera-battle, Noah and family manage to barricade themselves into the ark with their ga-zillion animal companions.

     But the ocean voyage gets rocky when Noah discovers that Ila is pregnant, and is fit to be tied. He is, at this point, totally convinced that it is the Creator’s will to wipe out humanity, and this throws a bit of a wrench into the system. So Noah decides that, if the child is a girl, and thus capable of reproducing, he will have to kill it. This doesn’t go over well with the other voyagers, and a would-be mutiny begins to develop. Compound this with a certain Cockney stow-away…and a very nifty fire-throwing machine…and you’ve got one wild ride through uncharted waters!

      There are multitudinous questions that need to be asked about this movie…starting with…who the heck decided to cast Russell Crowe as Noah? After his role as Lucky Jack in Master and Commander, it seems as if every film I see the man in he has been badly miscast, from the off-key Javert in Le Miserables to the Irish-accented outlaw anti-hero in Robin Hood! He was okay in Cinderella Man, although I still think they could have gotten someone to fit the role better, instead of recruited a New Zealander to put on a fake New Jersey accent! As one of my friends commented about his role as this ancient Biblical narcotic imbibed patriarch, “Well, at least Lucky Jack got to stay on the high seas in a boat of his own!” That’s about the only consolation.

    Next question: Were the rock monsters really necessary to enhance the story?? I cannot find words to describe the sheer uselessness of their presence in the plot! They were nothing more than generic versions of the Ents from Lord of the Rings, who blast off into paradise after being pulverized into itty-bitty rock chips! It was just…baaaaad. Actually, all the “special effects” were pretty cheesy, from the little aardvark-dog that gets hunted down by the carnivore-villains, to the Geiko-looking-snake in the Garden of Eden, to the 3-D deluge, to the narcotic berry juice dreams…everything! Sadly, this makes the story of Noah into something between a fantasy flick and a disaster romance…so Tolkien meets Titanic, in a prehistoric CGI setting!

 

    Another odd feature of Noah is its fixation with making meat-eaters evil. Just to clarify, I have all the respect in the world for vegetarians, and I am a partial vegetarian myself. I am also an animal lover, and if I had to kill to have meat, I would content myself with munching on dandelions for a lifetime. But does the fact that I need protein as found in a chicken sandwich make me evil? Are human beings evil for being carnivores? Are cats, or any other meat-eating animal, evil for eating meat? I think not. We are simply part of that “circle of life” that God put in place to assure balance in Creation. We must be good stewards of our resources, and always conscious and respectful of the natural world. Yet it was nothing more than a modernistic jab to make the good-guys vegan and the bad-guys carnivorous.

    Then there’s the whole concept of making Noah anti-human. This kind of harkens back to the above problem of making animals on a par or superior to people. I do understand, to some extent, where the screen-play writers were coming from when they purported that the animals were being saved because they were innocent, and were still the way the Creator made them, whereas Man had degenerated into a thing so unlike what he was meant to be. But still, why Noah suddenly became so violently anti-human was never properly explained. And the concept of his wanting to kill his grandchild through much of the movie just seemed a bit far and away. Admittedly, there are some pretty dark passages in the Bible, but there is nothing like this with regards to the story of Noah. In this case, it was a bit like…character assassination.

    Of course, there were a few saving graces to the movie. One of my favorite scenes was when Noah told the Creation story to his sons on the ark, which is shown if vivid flashbacks, combining modern evolutionary theory with the traditional Creation narrative. And surprisingly, it actually fit together quite convincingly! After we see the nature of species diversify and become more complex as each “day” passes, we finally reach the creation of the first Man and Woman, who bodies are shown to be glowing with an angelic aura. Now, this may sound a tad cheesy, but actually it is quite an evocative method of demonstrating their “ensoulment” that makes them unique from all other creatures, and the Divine Grace that illuminated them before the fall.

     Also, I do think that, in spite of everything that was wrong with this flick, its heart was generally in the right place.  At least it started asking some interesting questions, even if the answers tended to muddled or just plain bizarre. It shows that people have always sought to “be like God”, which some, like Tubal-Caine, interpret as an excuse to be cruel and arrogant in their efforts to subjugate the earth. Others, like Noah in this portrayal, honestly seek out the will of God, but often misconstrue it, with near disastrous results. 

    In the end, the film does come to the conclusion that the Creator has written his will upon the heart of Man, and that it His will that humanity should be given a second chance. The flood was indeed a cleansing and renewing precursor to the Sacrament of Baptism, after which Noah and his family could start their lives again, as Children of God. The rainbow (cosmically rendered as it was in the movie) was a symbol of that bond between God and Man, the Creator and His Creation, and a promise of an even greater redemption to come.

  

A stressed-out Naameh (Jennifer Connolly) embraces her husband, Noah (Russell Crowe)