NOAH (4/5 Stars)

The time for mercy has past. The time of punishment has begun.

You want faith? How about the faith of the producers behind writer/director Darren Aronofsky’s new film, “Noah.” They have reportedly spent $125 million dollars to make and market it. Sure, Aronofsky is a great filmmaker. But he is not a proven blockbuster filmmaker. His hits have always been these low budget character studies (Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, Black Swan). The one time he did command a large budget for the time travelling obscufated odyssey The Fountain it became a critical and box office failure, a sure poster child for ambitious folly. “Noah,” on paper at least, seem adept at capturing the audiences that filled the theaters for Darren Aronofsky’s previous films but also the people that showed up for Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” and other money making religious films. But “Noah” was not made by a religious filmmaker at least not one recognized by any church groups as being especially religious and “Noah” is a demonstrably different type of movie than Aronofsky’s earlier work. The producers are hoping to capture both audiences but there is also an outside chance it might not get either. And what will be left is the artwork itself, another ambitious folly or at least the most unique blockbuster (i.e. a movie with an over $100 million dollar budget) I’ve ever seen.

The strangness of “Noah” is born from its dark and primitive source material and the baffling sincerity of its modern makers in telling it exactly as it should be told. The original story can be found in the book of “Genesis” in the Old Testament of the Bible. It is a short story and can be summed up like this. God became dismayed at the wickedness of his creation and wished to eliminate all of it via a huge flood. He ordered Noah to build an ark and save two of each animal to survive. Noah builds the ark and God does exactly what he said he would do. He covers the world in a huge flood and kills every single human and every single animal on earth except the Noah and his family and the animals they have collected on the ark.

Now a modern audience would perhaps object to God’s malevolence in this story. Surely not every person on earth is wicked and even if they were, how is it okay to kill them all without warning or due process? Where is the justice in that? And by the way how is collecting two of each animal saving the species? Won’t they all become degenerate and hopelessly inbred in a few generations after the flood? Really the only way this story would make moral sense is if you were living in prehistoric times and continually witnessed the wrath of Mother Nature without knowing the science behind it. Surely, if you do not understand how the storms work, you may imagine that a deity was creating the weather in response to the behavior of humans. Or if you did not know the world was round and had not the slightest idea how big it was and thought the rain came from holes in the ceiling of the sky like the Bible describes (and not say the evaporation of existing water) you may have no trouble believing a flood could raise the ocean level for 40 days above all the existing land in the world and then sink to its original level after the rain stopped falling. These concerns are generally so prevalent in modern society that any Old Testament tales are generally eviscerated beyond all recognition from the original worldview of the author. Take for example the movie, “Evan Almighty” that starred Steve Carell as a U.S. Congressman who is told by God (Morgan Freeman) to build an ARK. Turns out in that movie, ARK, represents ‘Acts of Random Kindness.’ Oh the original Noah was rolling in his grave.

But Darren Aronofsky is telling this tale as it should be told: that is dark and weird and catastrophic. And he is using computer generated visual effects for all the animals. And he is creating incredible storms bashing up entire landscapes, and he went and built a huge ark out of gopher pitch and wood. In essence he poured the money only possible in modern society with a completely developed economy into a tale that only people in a primitive society with no scientific knowledge could take seriously. Who is the primary audience for this movie? Nobody? That is why I think the producers committed a great act of faith in this movie. I would not have done it. And I liked it.

The casting for this movie is pitch perfect. Russell Crowe plays Noah. Anthony Hopkins plays Methusala, Noah’s grandfather. Jennifer Connelly plays Naameh, Noah’s wife, and Emma Watson plays Ila, an adopted daughter. Finally Ray Winstone plays Tubal Cain, descendant of the original Cain and self-proclaimed king of this prediluvain Earth. Biblical acting is not your normal kind of acting. It is reminiscent of Shakespearean acting but with less humor. I think there is but one and only one joke in this movie. (But of course who could joke when the apocalypse is at hand.)  They all pull it off very well. Russell Crowe and Anthony Hopkins both seem more at home in movies that take place a long time ago than they are in modern settings. We are reminded of their roman gladiator movies for good reason. I could praise the acting of Jennifer Connelly but I would prefer merely to dwell for some time on how beautiful she is in this movie. She is of that group of few women like Jodie Foster and Sandra Bullock that seem to have hit their peak of physical perfection in their mid-forties, not an easy thing to do. Emma Watson is cute too but we all already know that. Stealing the show though is Ray Winstone as Tubal Cain. The character is completed invented and a definite improvement from the original tale. Tubal Cain questions his Creator. Did you not cast my ancestors out of the Garden of Eden to live in hardship in the desolate wilderness? And is it so wicked for me to survive as best I can with what you have given me? Why does you not speak to me? Am I not made in your own image? I think he has a good point.

Other interesting things to dwell on: The production design of Noah’s Earth suggests a world that has been untouched. That is the landscape is flat and spare. It does not look like Earth as we know it but an Earth just formed. Creationists are of this view and that the great flood is what formed everything like the Grand Canyon. However when Noah tells the story of creation to his children, when he speaks of the seven days, we instead see several billions of years starting with the Big Bang in very fast forward. That’s not quite right I thought. Also the wickedness of man is linked to environmental degradation. This too is not quite right. I would bet anything that the original author’s did not give a hoot about the squandering of Earth’s resources and was far more concerned with sodomy and other like things. I know it is sort of better this way, but if you are going to go so far to be faithful with the source material, might as well go whole hog huh.