A Curious Oddity called NOAH- My take

I never intended to go see Noah.  My curiosity got the better of me for two major reasons.  I'm a fan of the director Darren Aronofsky, he had never worked on a such a huge, symbolically loaded canvas plus a mostly positive review in Salon tipped the balance in Noah's favor.

Noah is not a complete disappointment, some elements of the film especially the brutality of men,the destruction of the environment, the whole ecological message still resonate with passion and profundity. This is a serious, somber film because the destruction of planet earth by man made forces and then by divine intervention are not mere trifling matters.  These are survival issues and they are accorded the respect and treatment which they are due.

Russell Crowe returning to the passion of his earlier roles plays Noah a man destined for great things, Jennifer Connelley is equally excellent as Noah's resourceful wife.  The tale is the first well known apocalyptic tale but it's presented in the film without any sense of grounding in biblical times save for a brief introduction highlighting the fall of Adam and Even and their banishment from the Garden of Eden.  Other than that the word God is never mentioned, the word creator is used instead.  When the film opens Noah has witnessed the murder of his father after having been told by him of portentous things to come.  Later on an older Noah now played by Crowe is seen living a semi bucolic seemingly idyllic life with his family consisting of wife and three sons.  They are vegetarians one might even call them vegans since they only eat the greens and fruits which nature provides.  They do not eat meat.  They have retreated from the world of men whose punishing activities have slowly destroyed the earth and all its bounties.  At this juncture the script asks us to follow a somewhat tortuous path, machinery is glimpsed, mining is alluded to, the term industrial might have even been used.  It's obvious that the script is a mash up of biblical allusions and tales of modern man in the modern world.  For people who are deeply religious and consider the Bible to be gospel this might be viewed as offensive.  I didn't have any such problem, on the contrary, it was interesting to witness a novel take on such a well known story.

Noah and his family leave after one of Noah's visions.  He seeks the help of his grandfather played with a lot of panache by Anthony Hopkins.  A flood will come, Noah must build an ark big enough to house all of earth's creations. The ark is built with the help of a sacred seed giving rise to a bountiful forest and the Watchers, great lumbering stone giants who are pretty awesome in terms of the CG effect.

That's the story in a nutshell.  Here are some of the things which didn't work for me.  I kept being distracted by the costumes which I would term artistically deconstructed.  A lot of woolens, some leather, buttons, great coats with hoods which I could see myself wearing (haha), these distractions kept me wondering who was doing all the sewing.  It seems trivial but it took away from the seriousness of the message pointing out the fact that this was an ambitious work of creative fiction which fell short of igniting a debate about the ruinous path which man and woman, ancient and modern, had been set on.  The fakery of the clothes was merely symptomatic of the fakery of everything else.  All the animals in the arc, once they're in there they're put fast asleep by some kind of aromatic herb dispensed like incense via smoke.  That's all it takes for the animals to keep from eating each other.  The arK feels more roomy than it actually looks from a bird's eye view and not entirely convincing when you start to break it down.  Lastly I was appalled at the brutal choice which Noah was prepared to make , gender discrimination at its most disturbing.  I should have been more moved than I was yet in the end all I felt was a bemused indifference.  In closing I would also like to mention Ray Winstone as the tribal Lord Tubal cain.  He infused each scene with a ferocity which was palpable. For him the choice was always clear man is destined to put his imprint on the earth, the creator is an absent landlord. This is not an entirely misguided view of the creator since he's not much of a presence in the film, he is often invoked but seldom answers leaving Noah and us to puzzle things out on our own.