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