Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky’s epic take on the epic Biblical story of Noah and the Great Flood is a movie that obliges an epic review, in many respects — more epic than this relatively straightforward appraisal will likely oblige. It’s a big and interesting and evocative and at times sigh-inducing work, for a whole variety of reasons. Boiled down, Noah is also poised somewhere halfway between a work of pure wonder and a more explicitly religious action text, resulting in a film whose fitful energies rather demand one’s attention, even when things aren’t quite working.
Noah centers on the title character (Russell Crowe), the last of the Antediluvian patriarchs, roughly 10 generations removed from the Garden of Eden and the first humans, Adam and Eve. Against the unforgiving backdrop of a barren landscape, Noah lives with his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly) and three sons, Ham (Logan Lerman), Shem (Douglas Booth) and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll). After a dream of a violent and deadly flood wiping out all humankind, Noah heads to visit his grandfather, Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins), to seek guidance. En route, Noah and his family happen across a group of slain people and one survivor, a girl named Ila (Emma Watson).
Noah’s conversation with Methuselah sets his mind. Convinced that the Creator wishes to destroy all humankind and start anew, Noah plants a seed from the Garden of Eden and then sets about building an ark to house all the animals of the world — an act which attracts the antagonistic attention of Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone), a warrior king descended not from the bloodline of Adam and Eve’s third son, Seth, like Noah, but the violent Cain.
From his debut film, Pi, on through to The Wrestler and Black Swan, Aronofsky has shown a penchant for obsessive and self-destructive characters. His sixth film is no different. While a family man in the broadest sense, this Noah is also very much of the Old Testament — a stern figure who embraces the cold indifference and vengeance, even, of the task for which he says the Creator has chosen him. For many viewers but especially movement conservatives who like to cherry-pick (or selectively focus on) which aspects of the Bible to take literally, that makes for a third act rife with plenty of uncomfortable moments and insinuations.
Aronofsky and co-writer Ari Handel make a number of other interesting and bold choices, though. They skip past much of the ark-building proper, and the sort of dissent and ridicule that would bolster Noah as a heroic figure, and interweave a few elements that could best be described as magical. Their boldest flourish involves the depiction of the Watchers, fallen angels conceived of here as giant, rock-crusted day laborers on loan from some offshoot of the Transformers series. Plenty of viewers will accept these beings simply as “cool,” but they definitely take some getting used to.
There are moments of hard and simple truth that peek out from the script, here and there. When Naameh plaintively says, “I want my sons to have children — I can’t bear the thought of them dying alone,” it gives us everything we need to know about her character. Noah, though, remains somewhat inscrutable (we witness more one-sided conversations with the Creator than combined complex interactions with Naameh and Methuselah), as does both Tubal-cain (when he bellows, “Your ark, your beasts and all your women now belong to me!” it feels like the progenitor of “All your base are belong to us!“) and the state of the Earth more broadly.
Other swathes of Noah, too, feel wooden and pre-fabricated — or, perhaps more accurately, lest that seem like some sort of awkward, ark-based pun, beholden to investment recoupment. Tubal-cain is an entirely functional foil whose inclusion seems designed to afford some action combat. Composer Clint Mansell, meanwhile, marks the narrative shifts in momentum, and all their attendant emotional markers, with much gusto — too much, really. Noah feels rather self-consciously grand at times. It doesn’t have the stomach for severe doubt or deeply interior psychological grappling and reflection; Aronofsky is more connected to the narrative’s mythic qualities, and the lessons they hold. This works in half-measures, but also creates a work that is pro forma in some respects.
Still, there’s a certain undeniable visual grandeur to Noah, which admittedly feels like a particularly imaginative and daring leap into uncertain waters for a big Hollywood studio film. Its general scale and inclusion of the Watchers are one thing, but when Aronofsky aims for Tree of Life-style impressionism, as with Noah’s re-telling of God’s creation of Earth, which unfolds in time-lapse-like fashion that courts a bit of controversy, with its evolutionary stages, it’s utterly mesmerizing. Would that Noah had even more of this. (Paramount, PG-13, 137 minutes)