| Prior to Noah’s release, churchgoers, evangelicals, and Sunday School teachers across America braced themselves for action. Would director Darren Aronofsky provide the world with a faithful account of the Biblical retribution story? Or would he besmirch the Good Book with a blasphemous adaptation, filled with sexy subplots and Hollywood heresy? Only time would tell. Now, one month after the movie’s release, we still don’t have a definitive answer. Noah is certainly not a faithful account of the Genesis story, but it isn’t exactly heretical either. |  Noah Review Summary TheCroakingFrog says Skip It What Hopped: cool rock dudes, the first hour What Croaked: empty world, bizarre subplots, murderous raging, convoluted narrative Recommendation Key: See It Now: see ASAP See It: see if you have time Skip It: see at your own risk Forget It: avoid at all costs |
Instead, the film is a jumble of intriguing (but unsuccessful) ideas, spread across a cavernous, computer-generated set, and splashed with an Instragram-like filter of Aronofsky gloom. You might be offended by the movie's non-traditional narrative, but don’t worry: you’ll be too busy making sense of the chaos to actually get upset about anything.
For starters, take the movie’s atmosphere. Noah's world—a vast wasteland occasionally dotted with trees—feels simultaneously expensive and empty, which is a puzzle unto itself. How can a computerized Earth have this level of detail, yet still feel entirely fake? Why bother designing miles and miles of dystopian terrain if you’re not going to take advantage of it? You could make the case that Aronofosky is stressing the fallen nature of humans in these rocky, desolate plains. You might say that the director keeps the focus on the characters, rather than the set. Perhaps the eerie emptiness is all part of the Aronofksy plan.
The more likely explanation? The man doesn’t know how to work with all that money. Historically, Aronofsky has turned limited funds into films that look and feel better than their budget, starting with Pi (an all-time classic) and more recently with Black Swan (a Best Picture nominee). Compare Noah’s $125 million price tag to his previous films:
For starters, take the movie’s atmosphere. Noah's world—a vast wasteland occasionally dotted with trees—feels simultaneously expensive and empty, which is a puzzle unto itself. How can a computerized Earth have this level of detail, yet still feel entirely fake? Why bother designing miles and miles of dystopian terrain if you’re not going to take advantage of it? You could make the case that Aronofosky is stressing the fallen nature of humans in these rocky, desolate plains. You might say that the director keeps the focus on the characters, rather than the set. Perhaps the eerie emptiness is all part of the Aronofksy plan.
The more likely explanation? The man doesn’t know how to work with all that money. Historically, Aronofsky has turned limited funds into films that look and feel better than their budget, starting with Pi (an all-time classic) and more recently with Black Swan (a Best Picture nominee). Compare Noah’s $125 million price tag to his previous films:
With Noah, Aronofsky has too many toys, and it shows in the film’s wasteful, uninteresting world, flush with cash and void of intrigue.
To the director’s credit, not all the animation falls flat. The film’s Ent-like rock creatures (which feel copied—no, stolen—straight from Lord of the Rings) are intermittently compelling, a lost tribe of fallen angels (called Watchers) in search of redemption. Always bizarre but oddly endearing, the Watchers are a worthy expression of creative license, at once unique to Aronofsky and at home in Noah’s world.
Regrettably, the fantasy doesn’t last. The rain eventually falls and the flood waters cascade through the mountains, washing away the human race and—along with them—the film’s last traces of narrative cohesion. (Warning: while I won’t spoil anything specific, I will now make general references to late-film occurrences.)
We get a traitorous son, a snake-eating stowaway, and a murderous Noah all at once, a trio of wacky developments each more bewildering than the last. Any of the three alone would have unbalanced the movie dangerously. Taken together, the three new subplots are so baffling that you will rapidly reach a numb, disoriented state of mind, filled with kaleidoscopical visions of headless serpents and axe-wielding killers.
Aronofsky probably wants to say something profound about the human race—perhaps about our deep, inescapable flaws; the inscrutability of the divine; or the plight of the nuclear family. And indeed, I seem to remember a passing prickle of revelation amidst all the snakes, daggers, and maniacal raging. Is there no one worthy of God’s favor? Might it be that the same demons live in all of us—that ultimately, we all share in some larger story of missed opportunity, failure, and despair?
And just like that, the prickle was gone. In its place was Noah, axe raised, breathing labored, a homicidal glimmer dancing back and forth from eye to eye. Oh well. At least we’ll always have those rock guys.
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