Noah is a movie that has had its fair share of problems. Rumours about the studio cutting it and taking it off director Darren Aronofsky’s hands are one that rises to the top all the time. Again, these are predominately rumours, but where theres smoke, theres fire and boy does it show.
Starring Russell Crowe as Noah, this tells the biblical tale of the creator (most of us probably know him as God) deciding that he’s had enough of mans evil and its time to cleanse the planet of human evil. So time to flood the place. Noah envisions what is going to happen and builds an Ark. On this Ark he will carry his family as well as two of every species. Besides taking on the biggest engineering project known to man he also has to contend with Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone), the local bad ass King who figures that the Ark should be his as its being built on his land. Assisted by transformers made from rock (seriously, Michael Bay would be proud of these dudes, who are known as The Watchers) , Noah sets about construction and manages to be ready to set sail when the apocalyptic flood comes, and when the Ark is afloat, its really only then that this movie sets sail.
Unfortunately the problems far out weigh the good here. Noah is a movie that has two very distinctive halves. The first half is disjointed and removes itself so far from the audience, that its an actual miracle in its own right that the second half does a complete about turn. Its like two different movies hobbled together. The pacing is all over the place in the hour or so with the movie jumping all over the place at a pretty frantic pace. And it manages to do a damn good job of alienating its audience. Exhausting is the only way I can describe the first half, and not in a good way.
Its nigh on impossible to make a connection to any of the characters on screen. They’re cold and lifeless, which is genuinely a surprise when you look at the casting, as the support cast alone includes Emma Watson, Anthony Hopkins, and Jennifer Connelly. Its like everybody seems disinterested completely. Somehow, it manages to make it to the half way point and its then, and only then that the movie improves dramatically. Suddenly, the characters are likeable and engaging and the movie adopts a steady pace until the end, where to its credit it packs a fairly emotional punch, that may well evoke a tear to explode out of your eye. And by the end, Crowe does a really great job of convincing the audience that Noah was potentially bat shit crazy. And Ray Winstone looks like he enjoyed this role immensely and is more or less unrecognisable under some fantastic make up.
Visually it is rather impressive; but again only in the second half, excluding one scene with a wonderful visualisation of how Noah found a load of timber. The flood sequence has been called the most complicated water simulation Industrial Light & Magic have ever rendered and produced. I’m not so sure about that to be honest. The flood itself, while gargantuan in scale is all over very, very quickly. From there on in, its just a big ocean. While the flood marks the turning point of the movie, it is a huge anti climax. The Ark itself though, is an impressive vessel especially when its being constructed as its sheer size is enormous. Where the visuals do fall down though, is these bizarre timelapse sequences which serve little purpose except to take you out of the movie completely and wonder are you watching a wildlife documentary….on acid. And to be fair the Rock Transformers, while visually impressive, and based on the Book of Enoch (you religious scholars will know all about it) make the whole thing very unbelievable. I’d imagine there is a very good reason these haven’t been seen in any of the trailers or clips. Personally, I’m not sure how deep the story of Noah goes, but the version I was thought growing up had zero Michael Bay influence. So depending on your depth of knowledge they may well be a very acquired taste.
From watching this is very obvious the movie was beseeched with problems. While the general public will never really know what went on, this only feels like half a Darren Aronofsky movie. And for me, that would be the second half. Aronofsky is a fantastic storyteller and there is no way in hell that the first half of this movie is his.
On a side note I’m coming at this review from the film point of view as opposed to the religious side of it. Each to their own and all that, but I’d love to hear some thoughts from people on the religious aspects of the movie, so please drop a comment below.
Finally, whether or not Noah will pull in Passion Of The Christ dollars remains to be seen. But with a very poor first half, this is one Ark that needs to go back to dry dock for some serious repairs.
