Noah strays from biblical account into dark thriller

Russell Crowe has had, to put it lightly, an interesting career. Over the course of his acting life, he has been everything from a Roman gladiator to a schizophrenic mathematician. He’s been a boxing champion, a French policeman and the father of Superman himself. With such legendary characters under his proverbial belt of acting, it makes sense for Crowe to continue upping the ante, playing more and more titanic roles. At this point in his career, however, it would take a role of absolutely biblical proportions in order to continue this trend of escalation.

I suppose it’s only natural, then, for Crowe to be cast as the lead in Darren Aronofsky’s biblical disaster film, Noah.

Aronofsky’s take on the classic bible story of Noah, his ark and a cataclysmic flood on its surface appears to be little more than typical Hollywood disaster-film nonsense. It has big special effects, CGI monsters and over-the-top action, among other typical big-budget-spectacle tropes. And, in all fairness, many of those elements are present in the film. However, despite its rather generic outward appearance, Noah is a film that ends up being far more than the sum of its parts, offering a story and characters that can be as deep or as shallow as audiences are willing to allow them to be.

While the film is based on the classic story of Noah’s Ark from the bible, audiences should not be fooled; this film is much more than anything to be found in the book of Genesis. The movie delves quite deeply into the story, including plot lines not laid out in the original text — numerous plot points are taken from the Book of Enoch, for instance. The film opens with a young Noah (Crowe) being presented with the skin of the snake from the Garden of Eden by his father, Lamech; however, the gifting is cut short when Noah’s father is killed by the ambitious and industrious Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone). Years later, Noah and his family discover a girl named Ila (Watson). Following several nightmares and miracles, as well as some counsel from his grandfather Methuselah, Noah begins construction on his Ark. Over the course of his journey, which covers the years before the flood, the flood itself and all the time spent in the Ark, Noah’s journey forces him to come to grasp with not just the impending flood, but what he believes to be God’s reasoning behind the cataclysm. As his faith in humanity dwindles, Noah is faced with Watchers, fallen angels forced to take the form of stone golems, cannibalistic cults and the ever-present Tubal-Cain himself, who is bent on Noah’s death.

The greatest strength of the story is that it has the capability of being as deep or as shallow as an audience desires it to be. However, this very strength also serves to be the story’s greatest weakness and possibly its most polarizing factor.

If audiences wish, it is fully possible to watch the film as a regular action-disaster movie, with little else to bog it down. In that respect, the film works in a relatively by-the-book way. Its settings are glorious to behold, particularly the set they use for the ark itself, which looks befitting of such a legendary ship. The special effects are well done, although nothing particularly groundbreaking; gimmicks such as heavy rain and stone golems, while fun, are sadly not quite as novel as they were in years past. The action is constant, and the movie’s pacing is, for the most part, consistently good — although the film admittedly slows down considerably during much of the third act. As a played-straight disaster movie, the film is good; in fact, it’s probably one of the better ones in recent years.

However, should audiences choose to look at the film in a deeper way, it rapidly becomes very odd. The movie, true to its biblical basis, tries very hard to be thought provoking throughout, particularly in regards to human and divine psychology. The film poses many questions to audiences in an attempt to draw them deeper into the characters; however, despite these questions, the film never really invites the audience to engage with it. The characters, conflicted as they may be, tend to keep audiences at a distance, particularly Noah himself.

That’s not to say that the characters are bad. In fact, for the most part, they are well constructed. Crowe brings his typical brooding hamminess to the forefront as Noah, with one of his better performances in recent years. Many of the problems typical of Crowe’s acting style persist — he tends to only have one facial expression in every role: squint his eyes, and frown — and occasionally his emotions feel a bit skewed, but his work is passable. Watson does a spectacular job as Ila, Noah’s adoptive daughter, bringing a life and spirit to the character much needed in such a dark film. The supporting cast does good work as well, save a few awkward moments from Logan Lerman as Noah’s son Ham. The only roll that consistently disappoints is Ray Winstone as Tubal-Cain. His performance is fine, but unfortunately for Winstone, he plays a character that audiences simply do not want to see; by the latter half of the film, every scene he is in feels entirely unnecessary to the film, and simply serves as an over-complication.

On the matter of over-complication, despite the fact that Aronofsky is clearly trying to depict a very morally gray story, his characters and plot are far too black and white to be able to pull it off effectively. The most compelling character arcs, in my opinion, are in Methuselah and the Watchers, whose roles are criminally small. While it is certainly thought provoking and intellectually engaging on many levels, the film may leave audiences, much as it left me, with the very strange feeling of not quite knowing what to make of it.

Despite some flaws, Noah is more than strong enough to hold up as a good film. While there are some minor issues with characters and pacing, overall the film achieves its goals in fine fashion. It is, beyond a doubt, entertaining. Its biggest issue is that, entertaining as it is, it is a film clearly intended to do more than simply entertain; it is a film that leaves audiences with more questions than answers, but falls just short of inspiring audiences to actively seek those answers. A thought provoking piece, Noah is more than worthy of a viewing, if only so audiences have the opportunity to engage it on their own level, and parse out everything it might be.

Overall Rating: 3.8/5