By ANDY GILCHRIST
Arts Editor
Religiously-based films always attract controversy. Whether it’s being very faithful to scripture like The Passion of Christ or sacrificing biblical canon in favor of telling a more character-driven story like The Last Temptation of Christ, there will always be those who are strongly dissatisfied with the final cut. Religion is such a driving force for so many people’s lives that for a filmmaker to interpret a story from the Bible without being accurate with every detail risks alienating a significant percentage of the film-going audience.
That’s why a film like Noah is such a rarity. A Biblical film bankrolled by a major Hollywood studio, the film spares no expense in production design or special effects to meet the director’s vision. Numerous elements have been added to the story in order to expand the brief Bible passage into a two hour-plus film, with some strengthening the narrative, while others weaken it. Overall, Noah is a visually stunning film with great performances, but it ultimately falters due to being too ambitious.
The film follows Noah (Russell Crowe), a man living in a dark world desolated by the wickedness of man. One night, he has a dream telling him that “The Creator” will destroy the Earth by water at some point in the near future and that he is the one tasked with ensuring the survival of all creatures of the Earth and bringing them into the new world. After a journey across lands scorched by tribes of sinful men, Noah has a revelation and realizes that he must built an ark to protect his family and two of every animal, which will multiply and replenish the new world, from the flood that will come to wipe everything away.
The ark takes years to complete and during this time, Noah becomes maddeningly dedicated to his mission. His wife, Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), fears for the lives of their three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Douglas Booth, Logan Lerman, and Leo McHugh McCall, respectively), as well as their adoptive daughter, Ila (Emma Watson). But things become truly dangerous for his family when Noah has a vision revealing that evil resides in every man. Learning this, Noah wonders whether or not man deserves to live in the new Eden.
Noah springs from the mind of Academy Award nominated filmmaker Darren Aronofsky. He comes from a mostly independent background, with all of his previous films, such as Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, and Black Swan, receiving critical acclaim for their intense focus on characters. The budget for Aronofsky’s last “big” film, 2006’s underrated The Fountain, was still more than $100 million less than Noah.
Although he now has a nine digit Hollywood budget to play with, Aronofsky never loses focus on the main characters. Russell Crowe gives perhaps his best performance since his Oscar winning role in A Beautiful Mind, where Jennifer Connelly also played his wife, as the man-on-a-Holy-mission Noah. He is a man who literally has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and Crowe plays him as pushed both physically and emotionally to the brink. And rather than just portray him as a flawless religious icon, Aronofsky and Crowe give the audience a darker Noah than anyone has ever seen before, showing the madness of a man tasked with saving the world by God. The film is titled Noah, without the ark, because above all, this is the story of the man, not his feats.
In addition to Crowe, Jennifer Connelly is excellent as Noah’s increasingly exhausted wife. She follows him to the ends of the earth and believes in his mission, but she cares even more for their children, a love Noah eventually becomes unable to feel. Throughout the film, Connelly portrays her torn loyalties with heartbreaking emotion.
Emma Watson is also incredible as Noah’s adoptive daughter. Wounded in her youth and unable to bear children, she is torn between her deep love for her new family, specifically Noah’s oldest son Shem, and her usefulness in the new world as a barren woman. Though she decides to stay with the family on the ark, Noah’s questioning of whether man deserves a spot in the new paradise puts her directly at risk. In scenes where they face off, Watson is more than up to challenging Crowe, unafraid of going toe-to-toe with the physically huge hero.
In a film where God and the Great Flood are the main antagonists, one would assume that any other villains would fall by the wayside. This is not true here, as Ray Winstone plays king Tubal-Cain, leader of an animalistic tribe of men willing to do anything to get on the ark and survive the end of days, as a man simultaneously powerful enough to lead barbarians, yet desperate to talk to The Creator. Winstone believably plays both of these aspects of the character’s personality, sometimes even in the same shot.
As stated above, any film focusing on religion is bound to court controversy. As the story of Noah is only a small section of the Bible, Aronofsky and his team were forced to add significant portions to the story. But past the controversy, the more important question is whether or not these elements help or hinder the film, whether they were added to appease outspoken religious leaders or to make it a better story. For the most part, the answer is thankfully the latter.
The most obvious detour from scripture is Noah’s descent. He is shown seriously contemplating not getting wives for any of his three sons, which would result in the death of humanity after his youngest son dies. To take a religious hero and try to humanize him will certainly cause outrage, but Crowe’s portrayal of him creates a well-developed character arc appropriate for a 140 minute film.
Another significant departure from the Bible is Aronofsky’s versions of the Watchers, fallen angels who help Noah construct the ark. Typically portrayed as humans with huge wings in classical artwork, the director reinterprets them as beings of pure light while in Heaven. After crashing to the new planet, choosing to defy God and help man, the fallen angels are fused to the Earth and become creatures of stone, hideous shadows of their former selves. A significant portion of the budget clearly went to these creatures’ development and one has to wonder if these CGI monsters were necessary to the story or were just included to make the story look more epic. Either way, the Watchers are one of the film’s most memorable aspects, for better or worse.
While Noah has a lot going for it, the film falls short of being great due to a few aspects that seriously hinder it.
Despite the four main characters being thoroughly developed and brilliantly acted, the rest of the cast doesn’t fare so well. Noah’s oldest and youngest son have no characterization at all, and while Logan Lerman does an adequate job as middle son Ham, there’s just not enough on the page for him to do. Similarly, Anthony Hopkins shows up as Noah’s ancient grandfather Methuselah for 2-3 scenes in order to provide Noah with the inspiration to build the ark and provide the film’s little humor, before being swept away by the flood.
There are also some underlying errors in the film’s logic. Despite the ark being absolutely massive, especially impressive as it was built by hand on location in Iceland, it is still not big enough to house two of every single creature on Earth. Also, the film completely ignores the fact that incest between Noah’s descendants will be necessary to ensure the survival of the human race.
The film’s biggest flaw, though, is just an unfulfilling feeling that the viewer gets as the end credits roll. The film promises an epic interpretation of a classic Bible story and attempts to deliver it by beginning with the Fall of Man story and cutting the Genesis story into the film later on. But ultimately, it just isn’t big enough. Over three quarters of the film takes place in just two locations: the forest where Noah builds the ark and on the ark itself during the flood. Add to this the themes of environmentalism and survivor’s guilt that aren’t expanded upon enough, and Noah clearly becomes a case of an independent filmmaker putting too much into his first big budget movie.
Noah is the first mega-budget film of the year. It succeeds due to strong characterization and Darren Aronofsky’s fearlessness in adapting one of the oldest and most beloved stories ever told, but it falters due to some characters not being developed at all, errors in logic, and there not being enough there to sustain the audience for almost two and a half hours. Based on these detrimental elements, Noah is arguably Aronofsky’s worst film. But if it is, it speaks to just how talented he is as a filmmaker and storyteller.
