The Case for Noahing

A friend summarised Noah, the first of a new wave (as it were) of Biblical epic films, thusly (spoiler alert!):

Noah: Man that was a weird dream – I gotta build me a boat!
Walking MacDonald’s toys: We’ll help you build it
Various members of Noah’s family [to Noah]: I love you! I hate you! Wail! Sob!
Methuselah: I gotta get me some berries!
Noah: Those babies must die! It is God’s plan!
[A little later]
Noah: Darn it, those babies are just too cute
[A little later]
Noah: Firighnigh, go-away-lemme-alone, slobber slurp
[A little later]
Noah: Gardening is so relaxing. Oh go on, let’s start humanity over again

Yeah, that’s pretty much the plot, and speaks loads to the story too.

As much as this is a Darren Aronofsky film and so has some amazing touches in it, it never really seems to gel as a movie.  The visual retelling of “stories” seem blended together from Richard Attenborough nature documentaries and scenes from Cocoon, and the decision to tell the story as more of a fantasy film kind of works except there does not really seem to be any attempt to make the hero likeable.

To be honest, it was actually this quality that lured me to see the film: if you know the story, Noah condemned thousands of people to die as he refused to allow them on the ark that would save 2 of each species to repopulate the planet.  How would his family react?  As Noah’s wife, Jennifer Connolly shows the dilemma she (and some other people who are fairly inconsequential, even if one of them is Emma Watson) faced when confronted with the reality of the situation when, for the most part, they did not have a direct line link to the Creator.

However, the film squandered a bit of the intrigue by being ridiculously long and slow, and when the two horrific CGI babies showed up, I had traumatic flashbacks to Renesme from the Twilight series and almost fled from the cinema in terror.

Connelly is really the main saving grace in the film, odd considering she isn’t given that much to do.  The tale is meant to be about Noah (Russell Crowe, who gets to sing a la Les Miserables – take that as you will) and we follow him a lot, but its very hard to feel sympathy or empathy with him, his “dream messages” from the Creator drying up (pardon the pun) shortly before they start building the Ark and so his decisions from then on a bit… well, unclear. 

When dealing with an all powerful deity, there is always that tension between free will and predestination, and to my way of thinking, the film didn’t really overcome this problem.  Noah’s regret and the like therefore seems a bit false:  Does he trust the Creator implicitly or not?  Is the Creator always right or not?  And did it ever rain before the great flood?

Still, on the plus side, the special effects are wonderful, Connelly is outstanding, and Watson gets to sing a bit as well.  Crowe is fine (the singing…) with the real impediment to his character being more the script and direction than his portrayal.  His sons however are all fairly bland, with Watson’s costar in Perks of Being a Wallflower, Logan Lerman, managing to play an exceedingly annoying and mostly unsympathetic d!ck quite well (not sure if he was meant to).  Ray Winston is along as the main baddy and seems to be literally as well as figuratively chewing the scenery.  Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah has a bit of fun with berries, but it is Marton Csokas who I remember most strongly for purely patriotic reasons.

Verdict:  Noah is visually impressive but uneven, overlong and a bit soulless.  But the “creation in seven days” sequence is actually pretty awesome (though not quite as literalists would have it) and Connolly rescues the film from drowning (as it were) by being pretty awesome.  50% chance of rain.