Noah, 2014.
Directed by Darren Aronofsky.
Starring Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Douglas Booth, and Nick Nolte.
SYNOPSIS:
A man is chosen by God to undertake a momentous mission of rescue before an apocalyptic flood destroys the world.
Boy do I love me some crazy. I’m such a fan of enormous, garish spectacles. Movies like David Lynch’s Dune that are just so wildly over the top that you wonder how they ever came to be. In the final scenes when Kyle MacLachlan if riding a giant worm into battle to a smooth rock soundtrack provided by Toto, you just marvel at all the insanity you watch unfolding in front of you. Or any of the big budget works from the warped mind of Terry Gilliam. I could watch The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen or Time Bandits a thousand times. We are given so many by-the-book blockbusters every year. Uneventful, uninspired multi million dollar tributes to mediocrity. Every so often we’re gifted with a movie like Noah.
Darren Aronofsky’s latest film is kind of a masterpiece. It’s an unconventional Biblical epic that combines crazy mythology, apocalyptic action, and the challenges of blind faith. The best compliment I can pay the movie is that I can’t recall ever having seen anything like it. For those of you unfamiliar with Aronofsky’s surreal films, he has made a very diverse slate of movies like the science fiction themed The Fountain and gritty depressing dramas like Requiem for a Dream and The Wrestler. Noah is something that feels like a natural evolution of his dark, dour dramas and grand ideas of his more experimental works.
You probably know the basics of the story. Noah (Russell Crowe) is a good man in a wicked world. God (or as they call him throughout the movie ‘The Creator’) shows him a vision of a world where the sinners are washed away in a grand flood and Noah is tasked with saving the innocent non-human creatures of the world. The world feels remarkably non-biblical. There are no sandals and flowing hippie robes here. It’s a barren landscape that somehow manages to feel like the end of days and the beginning of humanity at the same time. Noah follows his vision to the mountain of his Grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins) and begins to build the ark that will carry the last vestiges of the old world.
Noah’s family obliges, but even they question the wisdom of their actions. Noah has three sons and only one has a female companion. His second son Ham (Logan Lerman) wishes to find a wife and doesn’t’ exactly care for the idea of spending the rest of his days alone with a boat full of farm animals. The characters are portrayed with a lot of depth, frailties, and failings. Noah begins to wonder if his journey isn’t just about saving the animals but shepherding humanity into oblivion. If every human being is wicked, shouldn’t they too be purged from this new Eden the creator is engineering?
There are so many things going on in Noah. There are the small character moments of a family being torn apart by the unyielding faith of their father. There’s the struggle for survival by all the people that aren’t Noah’s family. The remnants of the human race led by Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone) who aren’t that pleased to hear that God is going to wipe them from the face of the Earth. They form a tent city near Noah’s precious ark and decide the best way to survive God’s wrath is to bum rush the ark, kick the animals to the curb, and ride the whole thing out. Aronofsky blends some great epic fantasy elements with a grounded, real world logic. You hear the story of Noah and the Ark, but didn’t you wonder what everyone else was doing? Apparently they were not really happy with their death sentence and were only stopped by a bunch of magic rock monsters that are actually fallen angels. Yes, there are giant rock monsters in this movie. You didn’t think Noah just built the whole thing himself, did you?
Life. Death. Annihilation. Giant magic rock monsters from Heaven. This movie is ten pounds of crazy in a five pound bag and I loved every weird minute of it. Noah is one of the most wonderful cinematic surprises I can ever remember. The acting is great. The story is just nuts, and the visuals are spectacular. I wish Hollywood took more risks like this from filmmakers who are interested in doing something different. Some of you are going to love Noah. Some of you are just going to hate it. To me, that’s the divine sign of a successful film.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Anghus Houvouras is a North Carolina based writer and filmmaker. His latest work, the novel My Career Suicide Note, is available from Amazon.
Originally published April 4, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
