I shared this review a few months ago on Facebook, but here it is for followers of my blog.
In a nutshell, Noah offers an impressive spectacle, a moving story, and a creative take on the divisive problem of original sin.
Putting its biblical origins aside, the story this film tells doesn’t make a lot of sense. That’s not to say its narrative is incoherent, but rather that the heavy-handed message it ends with seems meaningless. Mankind is wicked and a blight upon this world – yet the Creator chose to preserve us regardless. Held up against our society today, this prognosis seems irrelevant – after all, we’re here on this planet, and it’s looking a lot better than the one initially presented in the movie. What relevance is a near-extinction event thousands of years in the past if we survived to tell the tale?
But the story of Noah is one of biblical origins, so one must examine the film in that context to draw out its full meaning. Here a disclaimer is necessary: Noah is not a Christian film. Viewers looking for an accurate depiction of biblical events are going to be disappointed. Darren Aronofsky took many liberties in adapting the source material into a film that would make for good entertainment. Introducing the “Watchers” allowed a large-scale battle to be fought between Noah’s family and the descendants of Cain (which would have otherwise been laughably one-sided) – making a good action sequence. The unexplained volatile glowing rocks paved the way for accelerated industrialisation, blacksmithing, and even hand-cannons – making for showy action scenes. Tubal-Cain stowing away on the ark (he’s the main bad guy, if the funky names throw you) and Ham’s brief connection with Na’el enabled a later confrontation between Tubal-Cain, Noah, and Ham, with Shem thrown in for good measure – making for good drama on the ark itself, where otherwise there would have been minimal cause for conflict (and hence entertainment). Following the pattern, it’s easy to see why such alterations to the biblical account were made: to produce a film with better entertainment value.
And it works. The visuals are striking: most memorable are the barren wastelands and industrial graveyards, the fallen angels becoming encased in stone, the miraculous forest grown from nothing, and the first reveal of the ark itself. Furthermore, the emotional scenes are there in full force. A film in which you empathise with characters that lived some five and a half thousand years ago clearly did something right. I’m not readily stirred, but a number of scenes had my eyes stinging, so kudos to the film for providing that level of engagement.
The film provides good entertainment value, then – but what else can we take away from it? The main message that Noah presents is the notion that mankind is inherently wicked but God allows us a place in his new world regardless. Notably, the film depicts God as unwaveringly silent – a fitting representation for today’s spiritual climate, perhaps, but a significant departure from the source material in which God gives Noah unambiguously specific instructions for the ark’s construction. The silent Creator in the film, however, gives no explanation as to why he even wishes to cleanse the Earth of humanity – save for some eerie dreams that Noah experiences. So whether from divine inspiration or of his own accord, Noah concludes humanity is to be judged for its wickedness, keeping viewers guessing as to whether he is really fulfilling God’s will or just acting on his own convictions. But if God’s plan was to wipe out humanity for our wickedness, then why spare Noah’s family? The film only offers the explanation, “there is goodness too.” I suppose in order to understand God’s grace one has to look some 3,500 years forward from Noah’s time, to around 30 AD.
Another noteworthy point is the place that the animals have in the film. Noah sees the animals as a superior creation, believing they must be preserved because of their innocence; Tubal-Cain sees the animals as a lesser creation, believing they exist for mankind’s benefit. Here Tubal-Cain is actually more correct: after all, it was a serpent that tempted Eve, so the animals are hardly innocent. And Adam was charged with naming each and every animal, giving him responsibility for them. The film conveniently ends before the part where God tells Noah, “The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given. Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant.”
There was one symbol in the film I didn’t understand, and that was the snakeskin. It wasn’t clear if there was some inscription on it or whether it was a memento (or the original shed skin) of the deceptive serpent involved in the original sin (a great thing to keep a postcard about!) – either way, it was never explained, and its meaning wasn’t obvious to me. To further confuse things, it also appeared to have power of some sort.
On the subject of acting, Russell Crowe was great as the internally-tortured Noah. Needless to say, his character was pivotal in the movie, and Crowe’s portrayal of the conflicted man keeps the viewer engaged right through the film. For a supposedly peace-loving guy, he sure knew how to fight, though. Anthony Hopkins was in his element in the role of Methuselah, depicting a senile old man who constantly teeters between creepy insanity and insightful wisdom. Jennifer Connelly’s portrayal of Noah’s wife was overall convincing, and played a necessary complementing role for Noah’s eccentricities. Hermione Grang- err, Emma Watson was alright, though she’s going to have to act in a lot more roles before I (and probably many others) see her as anyone but Hermione Granger. Logan Lerman was perhaps restricted in his role, because his trademark bounciness would have ill suited Ham. Ray Winstone was brilliant as the vulgar Tubal-Cain – as far as villains go, he’s up there. And while I’m not familiar with the acting styles of anyone else in the cast, they each played their roles convincingly enough.
Finally, as previously acknowledged, there are a number of details in the Genesis account of Noah that the movie gets wrong. Actually, there are a lot, but here’s some that I consider more interesting tidbits than anything:
– Noah’s three sons each had wives on the ark. In the film, Ila has twin daughters, so maybe they’d grow up to become the wives of Ham and Japheth. Not a whole lot of choice when there are less than ten humans on the Earth.
– Noah was 600 years, 2 months, and 17 days old when the flood began (and lived to 950!)
– Following the genealogies, his sons would have each been around 100 years old when the flood began, and Ham was actually the youngest.
– God himself closed the door to the ark once everyone was inside, and it wasn’t opened until after the flood.
Wrapping up, I enjoyed the film. It kept me entertained. The endless stretches of barren land provided a striking backdrop for the corruption caused by mankind, conveying the necessity of starting over. The film certainly depicts the wrathful side of God and why we should fear him. It says little of God’s grace, yet he did choose to let the formerly-barren Ila bear twin daughters. One might conjecture that Noah’s grace in sparing the babies is a reflection of God’s grace, but ultimately it would depend on your personal view of God since the Creator in the film is silent. One thing Noah gets right, though, is that the human heart is a dark place – no one is exempt from the wickedness described in the film, and not even the apocalyptic flood succeeded in wiping sin from the world.
I’m not in the habit of giving movies a star rating or anything like that, because each movie should be judged on its own merit. The only sentiment I concern myself with is whether the movie is worth recommending to another person to watch – and I’d say this one is definitely a thumbs-up.
Observations 