Turning ninety-seven Biblical verses into a 138-minute movie is a feat unto itself. However, what director and co-writer Darren Aronofsky has done with Noah, is taken those one hundred verses and sought to answer the questions and fill in the blanks left open after reading Genesis 6-9.
Noah, in this way, is largely respectful of its source material, but it doesn’t accept the simplified nature of the story without wondering the hows and the whys of it all. Instead, Aronofsky and co-writer Ari Handel (The Fountain) wonder how God (referred to as The Creator in the film) “spoke” to Noah (Russell Crowe). It seeks to answer how Noah and his family — his wife (Jennifer Connelly), three sons, Ham (Logan Lerman), Shem (Douglas Booth) and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll), and his adopted daughter Ila (Emma Watson) — could have built an ark three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. Did Noah really do all of this uncontested by the most wicked of humanity, of which God wished to blot out? And, for that matter, why Noah?
Noah is a reading between the lines while it is also a changing of the story. In the Bible, Noah’s three sons are joined on the ark by their wives, while only Ila accompanies Shem in Aronofsky’s story. This difference is felt throughout the entirety of the story, culminating in the film’s third act, as Aronofsky uses it to hammer home one of the more pivotal lines in Noah’s story from the Bible, that being when God recognizes “for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth“.
This line resonates deeply as if to say it took genocide for God to realize humanity, a creation made in his own image, could not help but be evil. In this way, is God not just as flawed as his creation? It’s these kinds of questions that make the story fascinating, even while on a surface level it seems as if Noah ultimately devolves into melodrama and standard movie cliches.
Aronofsky smartly avoids a voice from the Heavens to represent God. Instead the word of The Creator appears in dreams and visions. Being a visual storyteller, this suits Aronofsky’s talents as horrifying images haunt Noah in his sleep, instructing him as to what he must do.
The film’s opening is a brief history of time leading up to the events seen in the film. Adam and Eve in the garden, the serpent, the forbidden fruit and rock giants of which we will soon learn are fallen angels and the bearers of knowledge brought to humanity. For this information Aronofsky and Handel utilized more than just the Bible to tell Noah’s story as Jewish folklore plays heavily on the narrative, though I am no scholar and have only read little that explains much of what is seen in the film.
However, the “facts” of the matter are unimportant as none of it can be proven one way or another. Instead it’s the heart and intent of the story that’s important. It’s meaning. In this way Noah is extremely accomplished, but at the same time the end result is a little obvious.
Noah is introduced as a man respectful of the Earth. He’s a man of God, he does not kill or eat animals for sustenance, though he will kill other humans to protect himself and his family. These facts alone present reason for why God chose Noah while, in their own way, offer up a question that will be continually asked throughout, Would a righteous and just man kill his own kind?
Crowe plays Noah without many assumptions. There is actually very little to his character other than to present him as a servant of God and a loving father. His sons represent other aspects of humanity and the prospect of being the last humans on Earth brings something out of each of them, as well as his wife, that could be looked at as sinful, none more-so than Ham’s “What about me?” attitude. This level of selfishness could be ascribed to human greed, or humanity’s want to procreate and see their bloodline live on at any cost. Each of the actors involved do a very good job of portraying these characteristics, even if they look a little too pretty doing it, which is to say I would have loved to see these characters a little less groomed given their situation. Booth, for example, looks like he’s in a Biblical-themed Abercrombie & Fitch advertisement.
On the other side of the line, separating good vs. evil, is Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone), a mining king, leading a horde of men representing the wickedness of humanity. To this extent the actions of these men are over the top as we even see them taking to eating the flesh of man. I was able to let this pass, even though I’d otherwise classify this as a grievance. This film can only dwell in so much subtlety if it wishes to draw a definitive line between the wicked and the innocent, which in this case it does, though Noah is too blinded by what he sees to recognize the differences for himself.
Where the film ultimately finds much of its heart and voice of reason is in Emma Watson’s Ila, which, to my knowledge, is one of the only truly, non-Biblical characters in the film, at least in terms of her back-story. Then again, the back-story to pretty much all of these characters is non-existent when it comes to the Bible alone.
Ila is grateful for being saved, she’s the only character that never thinks of herself first and Watson does what she can even as the melodrama gets laid on a little thick by the third act. But without her, the story would have been even more straight-forward and obvious than it already is, which is where Noah ultimately falls a little short.
By the time Noah is over we aren’t left with much more than what we walked in with, but this isn’t to discount the epic nature of the story’s telling. From a filmmaking perspective I loved Aronofsky’s visual approach to the film, Clint Mansell‘s score is as haunting as his work on The Fountain and the effects work is seamless. As much as I loved Matthew Libatique‘s cinematography I wish I could have seen more of it and the decision to use Iceland was spot on once again as its terrain is so other-worldly you almost think the landscape itself is a visual effect.
Perhaps most impressive to me was the way in which Aronofsky represents the river of water that ushers the animals into his ark and conversely his respectful presentation of Darwin’s theory of evolution. He takes the latter imagery right to the edge, leaving both sides with just enough to argue their case, though I prefer to see it as evidence that just maybe all of humanity is not the result of one incestuous, white family left to repopulate the entirety of the Earth.
However, filmmaking aside and as much as Aronofsky seeks out to fill in the blanks left after reading the story of Noah in the Bible, by the end we are still left with questionable decisions. One such decisions is a sudden cut to a drunken Noah. Yes, it’s taken from the Bible, but for as confusing as its place in the Biblical story may be it’s almost too obvious the way it’s presented here, especially in what it leaves out of the story. Perhaps this is a situation where the studio would not let Aronofsky go “all the way” as Genesis 9 offers up some meaty material to chew, but it’s pretty much left untouched.
