film

Noah (2014)

A biblical tale without, well, all the biblical stuff!

Not a lot of newer films grab my attention these days.  Something has happened to the artistic side of the film industry over the past 10 or 15 years and movies “just aren’t what they used to be.”  There are a few that grab my interest now and then, but almost none evoke that, “Oh I’ve got to go see that now!” feeling that I used to get on occasion.  I think it’s no small coincidence that the quality of scripted TV has also been increasing in leaps and bounds; clearly there is a whole new generation of talented directors and screenwriters that are moving towards television.

That being said, I have to wonder where the hell I was when Noah was in theaters.  I have what I can only call a fleeting memory of hearing about it, but all I can say now is wow, I wish I’d seen this flick earlier.  I can’t decide yet if it’ll be one of those films that I actually watch again and again or if it’ll be one of the ones that I remember fondly yet rarely find myself able to endure.  (It sounds weird, but there are a few films like that – I think they’re great films, but I honestly have a hard time sitting through repeated viewings.  The Usual Suspects is one that comes to mind.)

Noah manages to take the story of the Great Flood and turns it into a real story instead of biblical parable.  But it doesn’t just tell the story of the Flood, it tells Noah’s story, complete with his beliefs.  Besides the amazing visual eye candy, it’s a really interesting look at how Noah interacted with “his god.”  And what I really like is that it’s not coated and inundated with today’s Christianity.  When making the film, I think Aronofsky went to great lengths to put the events in context rather than trying to relate them back to what we know of the religion today.  Noah takes place completely within its own world and hugely succeeds because of this.  It doesn’t feel preachy, nor does it feel like a sensationalized version of the events.  Aronofsky manages to dignify and revere the subject matter and the beliefs behind it without trying to bash it over our heads.

It all takes place in a distant, bizarre world.  It could be in the past, it could be in the future, it could be on another planet; it is indeed a world of gods and monsters, magic and miracles.  These ideas are treated as facets of everyday life, and to me, it feels like a great interpretation of the early days of man as recorded by the Old Testament.  It is also a cruel, ugly, and bleak world, but visually stunning at the same time.

This battle was without a doubt one of the coolest scenes I’ve seen in years.

Regardless of what some religious outlets espouse (and I’m not really trying to tread on that ground), the Bible doesn’t say all that much about the Great Flood.  In order to make this movie, a lot of gaps were filled in, and the most noticeable is the presence of the Watchers.  The oldest biblical texts do indeed seem to suggest that fallen angels walked the earth in those times.  What the movie doesn’t quite touch on was one of the main reasons for the Flood, which was to rid the world of trouble-causing nephilim (half-angel beings born from the union of an angel and a human).  Aronofsky takes a subtler path with his choice to focus on the Watchers, fallen angels encased in malformed heaps of stone.

There are only really a couple of problems I have with Noah’s “historical accuracy.”  The first concerns Methuselah, who is depicted as letting himself be swept away by the deluge when the Bible clearly states that he passes away 7 days prior.  Not a big deal, but I thought Methuselah’s resignation to fate was sort of unnecessary.  The other odd point is that the Bible specifically mentions all 3 of Noah’s sons having wives.  Were this fact simply ignored that’d be one thing, but the fact that the middle child (Ham) actively seeks a wife only for Noah to essentially stop him seems weird.  Leaving out or altering parts of the original story is one thing, but Aronofsky going out of his way to actively contradict what little we do have of the real story is a tad strange.  Both of these issues are relatively minor and don’t drag the movie down so it doesn’t really matter, yet that also makes it all the stranger for them to be changed in the first place.

Noah will certainly be remembered, but I feel like the pacing could use some fine tuning.  The climax of the movie, the Great Flood itself, seems a little underpowered and unsatisfying.  The remaining third or so of the film plods along uneasily, with the happenings on the ark itself underwhelming compared to the earlier part of the story.  The inclusion of Tubal-cain (“the bad guy”) on the ark was really forced, and though Noah was intent on murdering any female children, we all knew it wasn’t going to happen, a point which took up way too much of this last segment of the film.

I think Noah might’ve made a larger impact if the latter part had been as grand as the first.  There wasn’t much of a story to tell on the ark, so, in my opinion, the film had two possible paths: either end as the Flood swept away the last bit of humanity, or montage the scenes on the ark and spend a little bit more time on what happens afterward, such as Ham’s departure and Noah’s seclusion.  Even a few time jumps into the future showing Noah’s descendants could’ve worked.

And that brings me back to the pacing and really, to a larger extent, the quality of the editing.  A lot of time is passing during this film, but I had a hard time nailing down even during my second viewing.  Maybe it’s not that important, but the filmmakers do go to the trouble to drop details indicating the passage of time, just not how much.  The very beginning shows us several leaps forward based on the number of and age of Noah’s children.  Later on we receive a small bit of information, where Methuselah tells Ila that she’s been a part of the family for 10 years.  It’s still difficult to place exactly how these 10 years have been spent though – is that comment intended to imply that the construction of the ark began shortly after they found Ila, meaning it’s taken Noah and his family roughly 10 years to build it?  I would assume so, unless it’s just a throwaway comment.  Then on the ark itself it would seem that some significant amount of time is passing due to Noah’s looks, but we can quickly surmise that the Flood has lasted right at about 9 months since (presumably) Ila got pregnant the day of the Flood and delivered her children shortly before the ark struck ground.

Again, these aren’t huge ambiguities that render the film confusing or unintelligible, but it’s always nice when the details fall into place, and the editing treats a jump from one day to the next the same as a leap that takes us months or even years into the future.  Compounding it even further are the allegedly long lives of these early biblical characters.  It’s reasonable to potentially assume that even though a character looks only 10 years older, perhaps as many as 60 or 70 years have gone by.  Unfortunately, we don’t even know if these extraordinarily long lives are included in Aronofsky’s version of the tale or not.

Whatever the shortcomings, Noah is still a fine looking piece of film.  There are so many great scenes: the growth of the forest, the falling angels, the sequences with the animals, the great battle with the Watchers…all exceptional.  Only one small thing bothers me: the issue of who exactly Noah’s children and grandchildren are going to breed with is still skirted around by Aronofsky.  It would be nice if someone would attempt a logical explanation….!

Be sure to tell me what you thought of Noah in the comments below!

Written by The Cubist