Critics have used a lot of words to describe Darren
Aronofsky, predictable is never one of them. Since his feature debut with Pi, a thriller centred on a
mathematician searching for a number to unlock patterns in the world around
him, Aronfosky has gone on to make films about drug addiction (Requiem for a Dream), love in a
spiritual and philosophical sense (The
Fountain), struggling to accept your place in the world (The Wrestler), and the fragile line
between obsession and madness (Black Swan).
This is a director who, when interviewed at the Edinburgh International Film
Festival, revealed that before Christopher Nolan was given the job of dusting
off Warner Brothers’ Batman franchise,
toyed with the idea of making a Batman film, but set it in the everyday world;
an ordinary man, not a billionaire, fighting crime. Now Aronofsky takes his CV
in another, totally different direction: the biblical epic as a summer
blockbuster.
When the announcement came that Aronofsky’s next project
was to bring Noah to the big screen,
I was keen to find out how he would manage it. When you stop and think about
it, Noah isn’t the most sympathetic of heroes; he lets billions of people
drown. Aronofsky’s films, no matter how obscure, all have protagonists that you
either care about, or at the very least you want to find out what happens to
them. All I remember of the story is what was taught in primary school, but I
couldn’t imagine Noah being the most likeable of leads.
Aronofsky wisely does not comment on whether God or
religion is good or bad; he avoids this discussion. Instead, his vision of Noah is to ask the question, what would
you do if faced with the task of wiping out mankind for the greater good? Could
you do it, and could you deal with the consequences? This is not the story of Noah that you sang about in school,
where the man who built the ark is described as a hero. Aronofsky’s Noah portrays him as a flawed man,
sometimes bordering on fanatic.
Russell Crowe has given some excellent performances
during his career, and as Noah he gives one of his best. There are times where
Crowe looks weary, struggling with the burden he has been given. Audiences will
find it hard to sympathise with Noah; for the majority of the film he is
unwavering, never doubting what has been asked of him, pointing out that God
did not choose him because he is a good man, but because he will do what needs
to be done. It is in the occasional calm moments later on, when Noah stops and
realises what he has done, that Crowe really excels. If you root for Crowe it
is because he is so determined, the responsibility all on him; you find yourself
begrudgingly respecting Noah.
Jennifer Connelly, as Noah’s wife Naameh, is the film’s
heart; she is who you empathise with. Naameh loves her husband, but she is
constantly questioning him, pleading with him, even going behind his back to do
what she feels is right. Connelly asks many of the questions that audiences
will have, some of Noah’s most
powerful scenes being when Connelly is close to breaking point, distraught, pointing
out to her husband how much of a hypocrite he is.
Ray Winstone once again gets the bad guy role, but at
least his character - Tubal-Cain, ruler of the remaining humans – has some
complexity to him. When the rain begins to fall, Winstone looks up at the sky
and asks what gives God the right to wipe out so many people. In one of Crowe
and Winstone’s many stand offs, Winstone asks what the point is of praying to a
God who has turned his back on them. Winstone’s career may involve him playing
tiny variations of the same role, but the memorable villains are always the
ones you find yourself strangely relating to, which is what Winstone succeeds
in doing with Tubal-Cain.
Noah is very much a film of two halves: flashy CGI in the
first hour, then downbeat introspection for the remainder. The first half is
very much about spectacle; the building of the ark and the floods that
devastate the world. Much of the CGI is up there with the best summer
blockbusters, with the exception of the stone giants, the Watchers; fallen
angels who help Noah build the arc. While the scene depicting their fall is
beautiful, dramatic stuff, the Watchers themselves are shoddy-looking. How I
judge CGI is if I stop and think, “That was done on a computer,” then the
special effects haven’t done their job. CGI should be a method to tell a story,
but if the animation is not up to scratch, then you distance your audience.
Considering Black Swan has one of the
best examples of CGI in recent years, when Nina’s madness takes hold and she
sprouts feathers, literally transforming into the Black Swan on stage, the
Watchers are nowhere near as impressive. When these creatures are talking to
Noah, or are surrounded by forest or desert, you can clearly tell they are not
part of the same scene, that they were added later on.
The rest of Noah
is dotted with visual effects and set-pieces that, while the film is one of the
first blockbusters to be released this year, it is difficult to imagine how other
big name releases will match it, both in terms of scale and imagination. No one
who watches Noah will fail to be
wowed by Crowe’s retelling of the seven days of creation. Using still frame
animation, we are shown the universe coming together, cells dividing, fish
sprouting legs and crawling onto land, before finally arriving at the first man
and woman. It is easily as spectacular as the animation used in James Cameron’s
Avatar.
For me, Noah is
at its most impressive when it gets the build-up to the flood out of the way
and it is Noah and his family alone on the ark. You have Noah listening to the
screams of the survivors outside. Crowe, hard faced and resolute up until this
point, flinches for a moment, before telling his family that they must stick
with the task they have been given. Later on, Noah uncomfortably resembles the leaders
of religious cults when he decides that all mankind should die out, including
his wife and children. It’s psychological, morally complex stuff, the likes of
which you don’t see in a Hollywood blockbuster.
Like Aronofsky’s previous films, Noah won’t be for everyone. It is overlong, takes itself ridiculously
seriously, and about as subtle as having a brick thrown through your window. Unless
you were looking at your phone during the film’s two-and-a-half-hours, you
can’t fail to have noticed one of Noah’s
main themes, environmentalism, which Aronfsky insists on hitting audiences over
the head with. Comparing the world of Noah
to our world today is a smart move, though Aronfsky didn’t have to keep reminding
us.
A large number of critics have described Noah as Aronofsky’s weakest film. They’re
probably right, but that’s like saying Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope is nowhere near as good as Psycho.
Noah proves that you don’t have to have
a summer film featuring giant robots and little else; a big budget event film
can be intelligent, have scene after scene of original ideas, take risks, be
controversial, and engage an audience. Noah
is far from perfect, but Aronofsky deserves praise for successfully transferring
one of the Bible’s most famous stories to the big screen at a time when, if you
watch the news, it feels like religion is frowned upon more than ever. When we
look back at Aronofsky’s work, if Noah ends
up being the director’s worst film, he will have had an impressive, unmatched career.
3 out of 5
Matt
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