Darren Aronofsky specializes in films that are painful to
watch: the destructiveness of addiction in Requiem
for a Dream; the physical brutality and abuse of The Wrestler; the psychotic self-mutilation of Black Swan. In Noah, the
painful viewing is the gratuitous carnage of iron-age tribal warfare set in the
period between two apocalypses – one caused by humans, the other by God.
Noah is not a
biblical epic in any conventional sense. Context is manufactured out of whole
cloth. One critic calls it "the Book of Genesis with a page one rewrite." Almost everything about the antediluvian world seems out of place. The landscape
is anything but Middle Eastern (extensive sequences were filmed in Iceland);
the costumes look like they came from Land’s End than from the ancient Near
East (women in form-fitting pants and cloth jerkins?); the weapons are anachronistically
iron-age, and even include a bazooka-like projectile launcher. The antediluvian
earth is a world of reptilian goats, magical powers, fire-stones, and a race of
stony giants called “watchers” in a bizarre interpretation of extra-biblical
myth. (These "fallen angels" are so ridiculous that the producers excluded them from any pre-release publicity shots.) Noah has more in
common with the old “dynamation” classics like Clash of the Titans and Jason
and the Argonauts than The Ten
Commandments or The Passion of the
Christ.
Yet Noah still
manages to be transparently preachy, a self-conscious diatribe about our contemporary
ecological crisis. As the film begins, we are told that the “industrial society”
of Cain’s descendants has ravaged and destroyed the earth – creating a post-apocalyptic
landscape reminiscent of Mad Max or The Road. Noah and his family are the
lone faithful remnant of the descendants of Seth, the keepers of the eco-friendly
true religion of the Creator, nomads running from the bloodthirsty tribe of
Tubal-Cain. The modern subtext later becomes explicit when Aronofsky
incorporates images of modern warfare in Noah’s retelling of the story of
creation and fall.
But the issues in Noah
are not only ecological. Aronofsky continues to unload his personal baggage
with parents in Noah. Parents in his previous
films are all deeply flawed people – self-destructive, abusive, and virtually
incapable of love. In Noah, the title
character is yet another abusive parent: a controlling leader of a family cult,
a cold-blooded agent of “divine justice.” Noah is all moral contradiction, a
religious sociopath depicted as a vegetarian who will risk his life to rescue
an animal yet think nothing of slaughtering humans. But the ultimate abusive
parent in Noah is God, whose genocidal
impulse and emotional absence are never mitigated, whose justice is only
tempered by defiant human compassion. In Noah,
the rainbow is just a special effect without theological content.
The film will undoubtedly provoke discussion about care of
creation, human and divine will, and the tension between justice and mercy. But
the theological content emerges more from Aronofsky’s distortion of the
biblical story rather than the source material, creating a confusing mess of biblical theology. Aronofsky
proves the old preaching dictum that “a text without a context is a pretext.”
There are some redeeming elements in the film. The narrative
structure creatively integrates biblical backstory as flashback. There are
moments of visual brilliance, such as the aforementioned creation sequence (which
even alludes to evolution). And the CGI action scenes are staged and edited with ferocious energy. But there are also major disappointments. The score
is bombastic and overbearing. And, while Aronofsky is often regarded as an
actor’s director (his previous four films have generated four Oscar nominations
for acting, and one win), the acting in Noah is two-dimensional. Russell Crowe as
Noah is alternately obsessed and aggrieved; Jennifer Connolly as Noah’s wife is
given nothing for the first 90 minutes until she erupts in maternal rage. Poor
Emma Watson as the wife of Shem cries so much in the film that one wonders if
40 days of rain was even necessary. Even Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah is more
caricature than character.
Noah is painful to
watch, and for all the wrong reasons. Save your money and pass on this silly pseudo-biblical
eco-apocalypse fantasy. 1.5 stars out of 4.0.
