Review: Noah (2014)

Noah (2014)

Whether you're religious or otherwise, the story of Noah is a pretty much ubiquitous bedtime classic, one of those perennial tales that everyone remembers from their youth; a key part of western culture and cornerstone of Abrahamic religion, featuring as it does in both the Quran and the Judeo-Christian book of Genesis. 

Bearing that in mind, it would take a person of mighty cojones indeed to not only consider adapting it for the screen, but to also dare to modify the tale. Step in Darren Aronofsky, an auteur and defiantly independent film maker who has assiduously developed the film over the best part of a decade and produced what must be the most downright bonkers, wilfully bizarre studio blockbuster in years.

The story itself adheres fairly closely to the old familiar, albeit with with some fairly mighty embellishments:

Humanity, cast out of paradise for eating the forbidden fruit, have forged a path of self destruction and selfishness. Noah (Russell Crowe), the last good man on the planet lives a quiet, righteous life away from the rest, foraging berries and generally living in peace with the world. One day he receives a message from “The Creator”, who is vexed with mankinds lack of respect and plans to dispose of them all with an almighty flood, tasking Noah with the building of an arc that will save all the animals (two of each), while leaving the other humans to die. These others, led by angry cockney king Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone), are understandbly miffed about the whole thing and do their best to inhibit Noahs arcly enterprise.

Darren Aronofsky has always been a maverick film maker with a history of thoughtful, deeply individual films: if anyone was to make a decent go of making this it would be him. Indeed, even with such a massive blockbuster canvas to work with, Aronofsky's Noah is little different to his other films in its bold, uncompromising, and gruelling vision; full of compelling, often divisive story telling and beautiful visuals, as well as the unerring potential to divide an audience in two. However, unlike his other films it is also the closest he has come to making a bad film.

Based on his own graphic novel, the film is laden with a frankly shonky script that, although hitting the key narrative beats and adding some neat flourishes along the way, never really offers any of the characters, Noah aside, any form of development, nor is there any compelling reasoning or motivation for the main characters actions. It's also fairly hard to determine a genuine focus behind the film thanks to choppy edit, robbing it of its clearly intended meditative core. The film is stuffed with varying degrees of social commentary and moral sermonising on the ills of modern society that never come to come to any fruitful conclusion either way. It's all fairly murky.

As mentioned, the story deviates from the source in some key ways. Noah is assisted by giant walking, talking rock beasts, fallen angels called The Watchers who come across as the bastard child of Optmus Prime and the Ents from The Lord of the Rings, who are admittedly fairly entertaining but seem to belong in a different film entirely. So too, a massive sweeping battle, deftly put together and possessed of a gritty realism evokes something from Peter Jacksons Rings saga more than anything else and just doesn't seem to make sense within the confined narrative of the story.

That being said, the film is often so dazzling to look at that these shortcomings can sometimes be ignored. The beautiful Icelandic scenery is shot with a loving eye, the cast frequently silhouetted against beautiful lingering sunsets. So too, a stunning two minute sequence telling the creation story from big bang to the ascent of man is a thing to behold, and will no doubt rile the religious purists.

However, for every beautifully crafted image there's another, jarring over the top CGI shot of poorly animated snakes and elephants walking through a pixel forest to jolt you out of your seat and remind you that what's on screen just doesn't seem to want to cohere into something great. Likewise, the post apocalyptic costume design is often laughable, screaming Benetton advert rather than a biblical epic.

The cast are varying degrees of fine, Russell Crow in particular shining as the gruff loner with some very difficult lines and fairly dark character developments late on, while Jennifer Connelly humanises the film and lends an empathetic core, no mean feat given that she has hardly anything interesting to say or, for that matter, any character development whatsoever.

Anthony Hopkins is the highlight of the film, delivering his four or five lines with a twinkle in his eye as the strangely magical and berry obsessed Methuselah, who doesn't fit in with anything else going on around him.

Going down the ladder, Logan Lerman and Douglas Booth are both completely boring background fluff as the sons Ham and Shem, while Emma Watson isn't given much else to do apart from cry, which she does fairly well. Bottom of the heap though is surely Ray Winstone, who is woefully miscast as a naff king who spends the entire film shouting and forging swords in the rain, or lending unintentional comedy from sitting in a darkened corner and quietly eating what I assume are dinosaurs and unicorns.

Despite all this though, Noah isn't a complete failure, and you can't deny Aronofsky's lofty aims and ambitions even if his final product falls way short of the intended mark.

Noah is a daring and interesting film, wilfully bizarre and unrelentingly annoying, yet strangely compelling and often visually sumptuous.

Not quite a biblical catastrophe then, just a disappointing misfire.

2/5

Thomas Shutt