Maybe they should have just called it Noah-ish
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“Noah” stars Russell Crowe as an man in a fantastical ancient world following his makers command to build a giant boat to help him and his planet’s wildlife survive a worldwide flood. Directed by Darren Aronofsky and also starring Jennifer Connelly and Emma Watson the story at points almost reminded me of the story of Noah from the Bible. OK, OK, I keed, I keed, but seriously let’s get this out of the way right up front, it’s obvious Aronofsky was not interested in doing a literal interpretation of the scriptural text. If you thought Tolkien fans were rough when Tom Bombadil didn’t show up, wait til you see what happens when you mess with Genesis. But does liberally adapting the source material make it a bad movie? I don’t think so, I think it just makes it a different story.
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And there’s a lot of things I love about this story. For one, it’s beautiful. Aronofsky’s choice to paint this universe in allegory pays dividends on the big screen. Fantastical creatures, audacious miracles, and epic wars all jump off the screen vividly. The performances shine too. Crowe is his usual masterful self, imparting this Noah with an almost psychotic dedication to his mission while never quite losing the warmer parts of his humanity. Connelly and Watson take stunning turns as well, and Logan Lerman… aka Percy Jackson… aka that kid from Perks of Being a Wallflower… was intensely compelling as Noah’s second son Shem. But the best thing for me might have been the music and sound design. I loved this score and was also really impressed with the way sound was used to put us in these moments and in the ark. In fact, the sound was so immersive at one point my wife elbowed me because she thought the sleeping animal snores were coming from my snout instead of theirs. And even as far as the changing up of the story goes, I could see some benefit. It allowed me to experience this story without knowing exactly what was going to happen next, which added a lot of needed tension and character development. And I have to say it’s not like he messed with the overall themes of sin, mercy, and redemption, they were all still there and movingly revealed. Although there were some changes that added a few themes that don’t seem to be in the original text.
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And that’s really my main issue with the film, and therefore the worst thing, is that it does seem to change a few things to preach it’s own sermons. Mainly about the sin of killing animals for meat, even going so far as to entertain the idea that the ark was more about the innocence of the animals than the wickedness of humanity. I’m pretty sure in the Bible God told Noah he was specifically sending extra animals onto the ark so they could eat and sacrifice some, so it didn’t quite jive with me. And unlike other changes, this one seemed to serve philosophy rather than story. The only other major negative is that the art style of the film occasionally felt cheap and underdeveloped, almost like paper cutouts. I’m sure it was intentional, but it didn’t work for me as a whole. and one more quick aside, this movie is also extremely violent, almost as violent as… well… the bible.
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At the end of the day, Noah is a sweeping and beautiful take on the classic Biblical tale. Even if the story strays quite far from the sacred source material, this new story still moved me enough to earn a B+
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Thanks for checking out this Your Movie Friend review, stay tuned for this review’s “Best Ever” challenge here in bit but first, I’m going to put up some stuff you can click over in this area. If you’d like to subscribe, which I would much appreciate, you can do so by clicking the big gray subscribe button. Want to see more? You can click here to see a review for the new Arnold movie “Sabotage” or Wes Anderson’s latest, “The Grand Budapest Hotel”. You can also Click the logo up here to go to yourmoviefriend.com where you can search by title for reviews. And finally this review’s “Best Ever” Challenge, where you name the best movie ever in a particular category and also try to identify my choice. What is the “the best Russell Crowe movie ever”. Mine is probably the one with the longest title, seriously it’s more of a paragraph than a title. But the movie’s great! Drop your own answer and a guess at mine in the comments and first person to guess mine gets a point! Thanks and please subscribe!