NOAH

Turns out an awful lot can happen when you’re hearing voices and building boats.

The plot of NOAH is both known and unknown. Descended from Seth – the third brother of Cain and Abel – Noah is first seen as a child, about to be given an heirloom passed down from Adam himself. Before it can be bequeathed, however, Noah sees his father slain by a descendant of Cain. The assailant’s name is Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone), and he is a king amongst the sinners that are most pillaging the world at the time of the story.

As time passes and Noah becomes an adult (Russell Crowe), he becomes fixated on a vision he is seeing of both original sin, the slaying of Abel, and endless water. Confused, he sets off across the badlands in search of his grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins) in the hopes that he will help interpret these dreams. Before he can get to his grandfather though, he is held back by six Watchers. The Watchers are fallen angels who now roam the earth. Once embodied by light, they are now giants encased in stone. While they first seem intent on keeping Noah and his family prisoner, they eventually allow him to pass thanks to a kindness Methuselah once paid them.

Upon consulting with Methuselah, Noah interprets the vision as a calling from The Creator. He understands that the world is about to be flooded, killing every wicked soul upon it. In order to preserve some of it for what will be “the new world”, Noah must work with The Watchers to build an ark. Once built, it will keep two of each creature, along with Noah and his family safe from the tides.

However, when word of it reached Tubal-cain, he too wants to get on-board the boat. As if that isn’t problem enough, Noah has to worry about his own son Ham (Logan Lerman), who is hellbent on finding a wife to come along. Along with that, there’s the added pressure of the family’s adopted daughter Ila (Emma Watson), who seems to be mankind’s only chance at procreation, but happens to be barren.

That’s a lot to worry about when you’re building a boat and the weather forecast is cloudy with a chance of forty days of rain.

NOAH is a film with great ambition and great scale. It has the audacity to tackle a piece of scripture that runs just three chapters long in Judeo-Christian scripture, and build it into a fully-fleshed narrative. It’s as if the Paris Opera Company wanted to take “The Letter” by The Boxtops and expand it into a full opera. What allows this ambition to succeed is the way that the narrative is built outward in a way that largely feels beholden to its origin. Contrary to the way the film has been sold, it isn’t out to turn the film into an action film, or a war film. Instead it’s interested in illustrating the very logistics of building something big enough to house all of the creatures of creation – and what to do with that menagerie once it’s inside.

To do this, director Darren Aronofsky paints a film on a larger canvas than he ever has before. he is constantly pulling the camera higher and higher above the Icelandic valley in which he was filming to show the pure size of the construction site, along with the vast migration of life headed towards it. On that note, while the visual effect work to create all that flies, crawls, or slithers is impressive…it’s the moment that mankind tries to punch a ticket for the boat that really underlines the scale. Seeing the horde storm through the forest is an image that stands out amongst many images that stand out in Noah. It underlines the massive amount of life about to be lost, and is reminiscent of biblical epics from days gone by that used to employ casts of extras that tallied into the thousands.

But within NOAH, the idea of ambition and scale might best be encapsulated in the form of The Watchers. Curiously absent from the film’s marketing, The Watchers might well be the moment where the script takes the biggest step sideways from the source material. They tackle the logistical question of how one man could build something that big, and likewise serve a purpose in the way they protect what has been built from the sinners seeking reprieve. They are the film’s most indelible image, perhaps for no other reason than the fact that they are the first time angels have ever been portrayed in this manner. Their inclusion in the story represents The Creator’s protective nature, destructive nature, and creative nature all in one fell swoop.

Speaking of The Creator, the film takes a moment around the end of the second act for Noah to tell his family gathered inside the floating zoo about the story of the beginning of creation. The moment is fascinating in its own right as it interweaves the two ideas surrounding our origins: creation and evolution. They are both present, interwoven into one campfire story, which is daring in a film that is focused on one side of the debate. However, what Noah’s tale suggests is that mankind is not worthy of The Creator’s greatest gift, Creation itself. He presents the theory that we continue to fuck it up – by pillaging it for more than it was meant to withstand and by harming and killing one-another. While some might see the story as the age old suggestion that “God is punishing us”, I believe what NOAH is trying to say is that we are punishing each other. That we do this to ourselves every time we fail to see what we are doing to one-another and the world as a whole. Perhaps after so many centuries of being downright rotten to each other, we deserve to be wiped out.

However, NOAH isn’t all sunday school and pancake dinners. The film gets a tad wobbly in its final act in a manner I don’t want to reveal here. What I will say, is that after one-hundred minutes of getting the audience to go for this myth and believe in its characters, the film stops trusting us. While Noah’s decisions have required a leap of faith the entire time, he finally seems to snap and go full zealot with the finish line in sight. It’s a strange tone for the film to take, especially considering how easily Russell Crowe seems to slip into “Bond Villain Mode” these days. What’s worse, is that at this precise moment, Clint Mansell’s score, which up until now had been glorious, literally underlines the moment with “dun-dun-duhhhhhhhh!!”

It’s almost enough to – pardon the pun – sink the whole ship. But upon reflection, there is so much goodwill built within the film’s first hundred minutes, and revisited in the final fifteen, that it is able to survive fifteen minutes of silliness…even at such a crucial juncture.

NOAH is a film that uses every tool in the box to tell a tale as old as time itself; beware of those who speak on behalf of a higher power. Throughout history, many have sent out messages to millions in the name of God, Allah, and many more. These men claim to have seen a great vision, and claim to know what must be done. Now sometimes, the solutions they put forward involve fighting for rights, and being better people to one another. Far too often though, the messages they claim to get from the almighty are messages of radical action, exclusion, and killing. For all I know, it’s entirely possible that some higher power is indeed giving them a message to gather the animals and build a boat…however it’s just as likely that they ate some bad berries and are having bad dreams.

This is the cautionary tale that NOAH wants us to hear.

Matineescore: ★ ★ ★ out of ★ ★ ★ ★

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