Review of Noah (2013) by Harry W — 30 Sep 2014

Although not the biggest fan of the source material, I trusted director Darren Aronofsky enough to put my fath into Noah.

As an athiest, the effects of religious cinema always have a different effect on me to those who already have their faith in the holy spirits. For me, I look at films such as Noah purely on cinematic terms because I find that the stories in the Bible are ridiculous and full of inappropriate messages from people such as Leviticus. The way I see it, The Bible is one of the darkest fairytales in history and it has given spirit and meaning to so many people just as it has caused rifts and wars between others. The influence religion has had on our society is huge, and that has affected our art as well. And cinema is an important form of art. So a story the scale of Noah has to take a very precise angle to really honour the source material, and the appropriate scale for it would be epic.

I find with many biblical stories is the question of many of the motives behind God's actions. While people today say he is all loving and forgiving, I can't help but wonder just why he would create a world and then destroy it all. A lot of my opinions about God can be explained through a quote from Spock: "I this is your God, he's not very impressive. He has so many psychological problems; he's so insecure. He demands worship every seven days. He goes out and creates faulty humans and then blames them for his own mistakes. He's a pretty poor excuse for a Supreme Being." People have often told me that God is all powerful, and yet he creates faulty human beings. They tend to explain that he gives free will to human beings and allows them to behave terribly, which means that he watches as people are murdered and tortured but refuses to do a thing about it and instead waits for them to suffer in the afterlife. My view of God is not the most positive as I understand little about his motivations, and so the nature of the story in Noah is not one that I find really justified. But on purely cinematic terms, the idea of man building an ark to protect the chosen members of society from the apocalypse sounds like a good chance for a fantasy film. In my opinion, the best angle to take on a story like this would be a mix between fantasy and disaster as to convey the intended magical spirit that religion has had on people and to project the eternal suffering and damaged caused by the apocalypse.

Noah ends up an uneasy mix of tones as it is mainly a large scale fantasy film with the visual style of a Lord of the Rings movie while attempting to succeed on a human level at the same time. The problem with this is that it ends up making Noah unable to establish its intended scale, and so the entire first 70 minutes of the film just depicts one-dimensional biblical characters contributing to the construction of the Ark in one way or another all while dealing with their own personal issues. The scale of the film is intended to be big and so in the provess the smaller elements of things do not level the same kind of impact. I feel mislead by Noah because as a whole it focused a lot more on the characters and their view of the universe than it did on the large scale disaster of the flood. The trailers suggested it would focus on the latter, but as it did not end up fulfilling its suggested prophecy, the result is a slow and overly long film. The pace didn't bother me too much after it got to the second half, but the first act of Noah it is largely a repetitive drama film with scattered focus.

The character drama of the film does not become interesting until the film settles down in the second half and becomes about life on the ark. So Noah is misleading because it suggests itself to be a biblical epic of large proportions but actually remains about the characters more than anything else. Once the scale settles down after the halfway mark in the film, that is where it gets good. But still, the fact that it fails to live up to its epic potential makes it a bit of an overblown film considering that it cost an entire $125 million to produce.

The visual effects were really not that impressive. For a 2014 film which maintains a budget of $125 million, the visual effects in Noah end up looking a bit too animated. Luckily they aren't overused, but they do noty create physical beings that look that good. As it is the movements of giant rock golems known as Watchers are very stiff and look like they were created from the same crew that used stop motion to animate the Wampa from Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back in 1980. The characters are weird enough without having lacklustre animation, but the missing frames in their movements seems rather ridiculous. The other creatures are more organic, but unfortunately they still look too much like animated characters to seen genuine. The production design and scenery of the film are a lot better and are captured with nice cinematography which enhances the visual aspects of the film in some areas, but it still seems as if the budget for the film failed to go to places which would maximise the potential for storytelling in .

Ultimately, Noah is not the technical experience it suggested itself to be which means that it has to succeed more on a storytelling level. While Darron Aronofsky's application of atmosphere is decent, his story is not that interesting and is weighed down by slow movement as well as biblical melodrama which is not as touching as it wants to be. While the film is somewhat interesting in depicting Noah's own view of the world, he still remains a thin character who only benefits mildly from what Russell Crowe can do in the role. There is little depth placed on a lot of the characters which means that the complex universe in the film is not as engaging as it should be, and while it has a few interesting themes, as a whole it fails to illuminate an understanding of what the bible was saying. The messages there were confusing enough without the narrative ambiguities in Noah. Despite the best intentions and the potential, Noah is only able to end up half decent at best while consistently flawed in many areas.

I will say that the one area where there are little problems is the cast.

Russell Crowe's leading performance is ok. He is dealt a character who remains fairly thin until deep into the second half of Noah, and so there is only so much he can do with the part. But luckily enough his natural archetype deals the part pretty decent justice. He remains largely monotonous the entire time in terms of balancing aggression with stoic determination which fits the profile of the part well. He stands confidently in the part an has the right look for the role, so he has the appropriate strength for the part too. Russell Crowe's instinctive archetype makes him a good fit for the part of Noah, and during the more dramatic scenes in the second half of the film he is able to put a lot of strong dramatic charisma into the part, so he transcends the fact that the film as a whole is not that good at characterising the titular Noah. He is limited by the part, but he is ok as a whole.

But it is Emma Watson who delivers the standout performance. In her most widely released role not to be part of the Harry Potter universe to date, Emma Watson contributes excellet charisma to her supporting role. She faces off with the intense nature of the subject matter really well and is therefore able to establish a lot of sympathy in viewers. She remains involved excellently both physically and emotionally becuase her line delivery is excellently tense without going melodramatic and she engages with the universe around her in a really convincing manner. Emma Watson brings a lot to her role in Noah which reminds us all just how talented an actress she is, and her chance at branching out in Noah reminds us that she is far from overrated.

Jennifer Connelly is the other standout in Noah. She is great because while her character alone is also a thinly sketched one, she is able to draw a lot from the way she interacts with the surrounding cast members, particularly Russell Crowe and Emma Watson. She makes the atmosphere of the film a lot more dramatic by bringing a compelling focus to the characters in the story. Her line delivery and physicality ties into the tense nature of the atmosphere very well, and so her performance is one of the much finer elements of Noah.

Ray Winstone makes an easy antagonist in the story, Anthony Hopkins brings a strong sense of wisdom to his supporting role, and Logan Lerman delivers a well involved performance to Noah.

But despite the quality of a strong cast and the best intentions from Darren Aronofsky, Noah is not the biblical epic that it wants to be despite having a massive budget and instead serves as an overblown and slow drama film with narrative flaws and a lack of adventure.