Movie Review of Noah (2014)

If it wasn't for the fact that Noah turns up in the Bible, Torah and Koran, we would be positioning this film alongside epic global disaster movies like The Day After Tomorrow or 2012.

I didn't realize that. I entered into my viewing expecting to watch something evangelical dressed up as entertainment.

After all most of us have already heard of the prophet Noah, in vaguely sanitized stories told in childhood. Like a fairy tale, wherein terrible things are told in such sweet tones that the actual horror barely penetrates. 

Little Red Riding Hood can be devoured whole by a wolf, or Hansel and Gretel abandoned in a forest by their parents, to the accompaniment of delighted squeals from the rapt pre-schoolers listening. They are bedtime stories, not meant to frighten, even as children are betrayed, tortured, neglected and killed. It's all in the calm presentation and the laughter.

Noah built an ark, and the animals entered it two by two. He and his family sailed around until a dove found dry land. And everyone was saved.

It's the fine detail which makes the story horrific, and director Darren Aronofsky did not stint on the fine detail. Did you ever actually notice that THE ENTIRE WORLD'S POPULATION was destroyed in the background? Writer Ari Handel did and Noah the movie tells that story too.

Noah is portrayed as a gentle man, a kind, compassionate individual in a darkening world. He's given terrible orders from above. He obeys them because he sees no other choice. It hardens him, pushes him to the brink of insanity.

A man who wouldn't harm a single living thing is charged with assisting in the destruction of all. His very complicity creates psychopathy. He doesn't merely build a sanctuary and sail it, he fights off all he deems unworthy to survive.

Those doomed to obliteration do not go quietly to their Fate. They fight with everything they have to find physical salvation. Noah condemns them all, with unflinching righteousness, to the abyss. Extinction on a scale so massive, that it can barely be comprehended.

Of course, it's easy to see Noah as a religious fanatic, so lost in his own interpretation of divine revelation that all other considerations pale into insignificance. But there's another telling here too.

It's the story of everyone who ever blindly followed directives from their superiors. A fact that is underscored when Noah sees humanity reduced to silhouetted figures of soldiers flashing through the ages. Brother against brother finds expression in Cain and Abel, but that is merely a metaphor for all war. Nation against nation. Religion against religion. Race, ideology, all that ever caused one human being to feel that another had to die for their perceived difference.

In Noah's marionette display, those soldiers weren't merely contemporary. They wore the uniforms of warriors throughout the ages. They exist right now.

And it's that two-dimensional vision which presented humanity at its darkest edge. It was the petty violence that pushed Noah into supporting an act of absolute violence - the annihilation of all. 

As for the desperate fighting which preceded it, I'd like to say it was as anachronistic as anything, but who can know what came before the Flood. It could have been a world precisely like our own, or a Medieval bloodbath, or the primitive beating of sticks and rocks from tree-dwelling societies. And that, I think, is the point.

Emma Watson, when interviewed about her role as Lla in the movie, said that Noah could have been set in any age. It could be thousands of years in the past, or thousands in the future. I could see that. There was a timelessness about the graphics that didn't necessarily place it a decade of generations since the beginning of time.

But those legends dated back to the dawn of history, insofar as history means that which was written down. I knew those stories. I've studied them. I just didn't expect to find them actually being told here.

That they were stunned and delighted me, before I was so lost in the sheer grandeur and emotional roller-coaster telling, that I no longer cared for source analysis. (And let me tell you that it is emotional. There was one scene in particular which left me in bits, but that would be a spoiler. Best to discover it for yourself.)

The Flood may be one of the oldest stories of all, but you will feel like you're discovering it for the first time. Aronofsky and Handel's story-telling is that good.

Thousands of Hollywood directors really need to take note here. Despite Noah's cast ultimately reduced to just one family, it managed to pass the Bechdel Test with the last two women on Earth.

The Bechdel Test asks that there are two named female characters, who have a conversation with each other on any topic which doesn't involve male characters. Naameh (Jennifer Connelly) and Lla (Emma Watson) have several. Nor are those discussions trivial. They hold great significance within the story itself.

While nominally subservient to their men (as the source story indicates was the case), neither Naameh nor Lla are weak, fawning, two-dimensional beings. You couldn't replace either with a pretty lamp-shade. There's a sense that they are both important for much more than their ability to conceive children. They are true partners for their men.

And if they get to be the Mothers of us all, I for one am quite pleased about that.