Film Review: “Noah”

Like the Biblical account of creation, with Adam and Eve
consuming the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden or the construction and
destruction of the Tower of Babel, the story of Noah reflects the Bible’s cyclical
accounts of mankind’s overreaching and its consequent punishment. Darren Aronofsky’s new film, “Noah,” changes a good deal in the
familiar tale of Noah and the Ark, in effect boldly creating a new mythology on
the foundations of the old.

To begin with, a voiceover provides a whole new account of
the history of humankind after the Fall, a strange and utterly preposterous
tale of an industrial civilization established by the descendants of Cain — all
of this thousands of years ago — which ultimately pollutes the Earth, turning
it into a wasteland. Aside from Noah (Russell Crowe) and his family, apparently
the only good people left, a group of fallen angels expelled from Heaven inhabit
that barren world, strangely turned into animated piles of rock that lumber
about, waving their multiple arms and growling like cement mixers. They defend
Noah and his family against an attack by the other folks, throngs of Cain’s
tribe, led by an angry villain named Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone).

A vision of water inspires Noah to build the famous ark, with
the help of his family and those articulated rock piles, and further, on
instructions from God, always called the Creator in the movie, fill it with all
the Earth’s living things. To keep the enormous floating zoo quiet and livable,
Noah’s wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly) ingeniously concocts
a sort of incense that knocks them all out — the birds, the insects, the
reptiles, the elephants, etc. — so they can sleep for the requisite 40 days and
40 nights.

Aronofsky also improves on the Old
Testament by elaborating the bare Biblical sketch of Noah’s family, creating
tensions between him and his two older sons, Shem (Douglas Booth) and Ham
(Logan Lerman). The director turns Noah into a
gloomy, deranged tyrant, who believes that mankind should simply vanish after
everyone in his family dies, and therefore resolves to murder the newborn
children of Shem’s wife, Ila
(Emma Watson). Another conflict that the Bible somehow missed
results from the presence of a stowaway on the ark, good old Tubal-cain again, who temporarily persuades Ham to betray his
father and attempts to kill the skipper.

Despite its wealth of wonderful stories, most of the movies
based on the Bible, except possibly for some of those lavish epics of Cecil B. DeMille (my own favorite is “Samson and Delilah”), generally
achieve only indifferent artistic success. Pursuing a decidedly unusual
approach to the text and benefiting from the latest in cinema technology, Darren
Aronofsky hardly challenges anything of DeMille’s or any other director. (Incidentally, the most
memorable Noah, John Huston, plays him as an irascible drunk in the modestly
titled “The Bible,” which Huston also directed.)

Although many of the events and people in the Old Testament
provide appropriate subjects for epic treatment — Moses and David, for example —
Aronofsky’s effort grows ever more ludicrous as it
piles on bizarre inventions and ridiculous creatures. The inclusion of all
sorts of other people to flesh out the tale — not only Tubal-cain and his thousands, but also Methuselah (Anthony
Hopkins) and flashbacks to Adam and Eve presented as glowing silhouettes — suggests
a kind of directorial desperation.

Thanks to the wonders of computer-generated images and all
the paraphernalia of contemporary technology that so many viewers and reviewers
mistake for filmmaking, “Noah” overflows with myriad special effects, which may
in fact provide the major appeal, if any, of the film. The sequences showing
all the creatures of the Earth, from butterflies to elephants, heading for the ark
make for a most impressive series of images — it’s hard to resist a shot of
hundreds of snakes slithering hurriedly toward salvation.

Among all the remarkable effects, probably the most
spectacular involve the actual flood, which begins with multiple waterspouts
shooting out of the ground to meet the torrential rains from above,
creating the ocean that covers the Earth and floats the enormous vessel. That
particular sequence suggests the great triumph of Hollywood over the Bible
itself. It shows what God would have done if only He had the money.

This article appears in Mar 26 – Apr 1, 2014.