Noah

Noah was somewhat better than I expected it to be, given the trailer, and it's a film I'm glad was made, but ultimately, I feel that there was a much better film that could and should have been here. 

I like the idea of taking Bible stories and making them epic fantasies or sci-fi. So many of them are such huge, absurd and yet meaningful stories. And perhaps none more so than the story of the Flood. It's a familiar story to most Christians: after a few generations, God decided that the world was so corrupt it needed to be washed clean. Noah and his family were chosen as the sole survivors, and were charged with building a vast arc and filling it with breeding pairs of every animal species. The other men with their wicked hearts laughed at him, usually with their legs waggling in the air, but then the rains came and they all perished. After almost losing hope in the endless water, a dove brings back an olive branch and the family knows they are saved, the arc eventually running aground on a mountaintop. 

This film is from a tradition that I enjoy, one that says 'hold on, if this is taken as a story, allegorical or otherwise, shouldn't we be asking other questions? Was everyone killed really wicked? Even the small children? Could Noah and his family see or hear their fellow men dying, desperate and praying for help, and yet ignored them? Was it really right for all the newborn babies of the world to be drowned in their mothers' arms? 

This film also expands its running time - perhaps a little too far - with other similar questions. What made Noah so certain God wanted him and his family to survive - especially since the world with humans in it, with their original sin, isn't likely to get much better anyway? In the tradition of Abraham, should a man be prepared to kill his own family if he thinks that is the correct course of action? How does a man look on those he knows are condemned to die when he goes out amongst them, especially if they seem like good human beings?

What I hoped we would get to answer these interesting questions would be a primarily political epic. I thought we would have some Game of Thrones conniving when a local king sees what Noah is building and becomes interested - yet, of course, sceptical of the story of the flood. How will Noah manage to keep an army at bay and protect his arc? Unfortunately, the answer that quirky Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky comes up with is that he has Watchers on his side, fallen angels encased with rocks that make for one of the sillier genre-fiction elements of this piece. There is also some guff about a magic mineral that seems to function a bit like gunpowder, and the completely underdeveloped line that Noah and family virtuously eschew meat and somehow live on the bounty of an almost desolate land. 

There is also Methuselah, Noah's grandfather, who does indeed live until a week before the Flood in the Bible. Here, mischievously played by Anthony Hopkins, he has a repository of magical seeds, can cure lifelong injuries with a touch, and dies not of old age but accepting death from the Flood, as though he were one of the wicked. He's a bit of a daft plot-mover, but Hopkins just about makes him work. 

In terms of characters and performance, this works pretty well. Ray Winstone as the local king is a bit overly cheesy, and while Emma Watson does well, she probably needs to do some character roles soon so that she doesn't just seem to be doing the exact same performance in everything she does, but the focal point is really Russell Crowe, and he does burdened, pained authority figure extremely well. I can't fault how he is both the hero and the menace of the film at different parts, while remaining a consistent character. 

This isn't the Bible story - it's inspired by it, and by the time rock angels appear...even before they start bashing brains...you know it's not meant to be a straight rendition. The film even makes the point of pairing the creation story with a time-lapse-style CG animation of evolution, and pushes its point about man continuing to bring disaster to the Earth with soldiers of many post-diluvian real-world cultures, right up to the twentieth century, which I found jarring. Thus, I don't think it ought to offend many religious types, and there was something to admire in its silent God who nonetheless demonstrates His presence in a world that after all has far less cause to doubt its creator than we do. 

A more thought-provoking and gritty Hollywood action film than most, asking some very interesting questions about theology, it was nonetheless a little undermined by its unnecessary length, its sometimes lazy storytelling, its lack of real exploration of the issues it raises, and some very cheesy genre fiction inclusions. Nonetheless, well worth seeing - and discussing.