Noah released on Blu-ray on 7/29 from Paramount
“You are angry. You judge me. Let me tell you a story.”
Encircled by his family, encased by the ark, in an attempt to drown out the cries of the drowning and dying outside the walls of the boat and simply to explain himself, Noah utters this line and launches into screenwriters Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel’s version of the Biblical creation story. Visually arresting and packed to the gills with theological meaning and profound ideas (ideas far deeper than that perhaps each “day” described in the Biblical narrative was longer than a 24 hour period), this creation story is the greatest sequence in a genuinely epic production that never ceases to be fascinating, even if the whole thing threatens to push beyond the reach of Aronofsky and his team at every turn.
A man is chosen by his world’s creator to undertake a momentous mission before an apocalyptic flood cleanses the world.
Having seen the film in theaters and being immediately inspired to go to Aronofsky’s sources and read from both The Bible and The Book of Enoch, I ended up writing a large piece on the inspirations behind the film. Very rarely does a film inspire me in such a way. I was compelled to study, to write, to dialog with friends and fellow movie fans. Here was a movie that was certainly very messy, but was also so filled with big ideas, triumphant visuals, bold story-telling decisions, AND it seemed to be pissing off people of all sorts of varied faith backgrounds before anyone had really even seen it. This is exciting cinema.
One of the great successes of Noah is simply how daring and odd and challenging it is as a final film, in spite of being a giant-budgeted, studio-backed film attempting to tap into a “faith” market that has no interest in much aside from the strictest interpretations of scripture. Against all odds, the film has been a financial success; also against all odds, Darren Aronofsky has made a massive mainstream hit that maintains so much of the visual flair and uncompromisingly disturbing subject matter he is most famous for from previous films such as The Fountain, The Wrestler, and Black Swan. I applaud Aronofsky, and even Paramount, for releasing such a weird and wonderful film upon the world. While I don’t consider this to be the best film of the year, or even my favorite, I will say that the movie has probably impacted me personally on a deeper level than most any film will this year. I identify as a person of faith, but I’m also a relentless question asker and have made a certain amount of peace with the fact that I’ll be living in tension about what I believe for the rest of my life. For this reason Noah is perfectly suited to my disposition. I love to wrestle, to seek truth, to try and find God. And this is a film speaking on my wavelength. It is a fairly specific wavelength, not shared by most evangelicals, or even many Americans, regardless of their espoused faith or lack of faith. Aronofsky himself, in an interview on The Business, identifies as a secular Jew, but won’t go as far as to say he is an atheist.
So the target audience for Noah seems to be the seeker, perhaps the wanderer from the faith. Offering little in the way of pat answers, but much in the way of insight into human nature, faith versus doubt, and the very nature of the human condition, Noah isn’t a film for people seeking a beat for beat recap of the biblical flood narrative. It isn’t for people who want stories tied up neatly by the end. It isn’t even for people who want to simply root for a hero and see him triumph.
But it certainly speaks to me. And in order to get into why, I’m going to dip into spoiler territory. But if you’ve read this far and don’t want to read any further, I highly recommend seeing Noah. You likely won’t enjoy all of it. There may be some parts that trouble you, and it may go in directions you weren’t expecting. But if you prepare yourself to really grapple with Aronofsky and allow the visuals to wash over you, you have the opportunity to experience one of the most engaging films of the year.
The World Building: Strongly disliked by some, I’m fascinated by the fantasy world that Aronofsky created for this film. Drawing inspiration from the Book of Enoch, which not only asserts that great industrialized cities were present in the ancient world, but also tells of a race of angels called Watchers who assisted humans in the creation of these cities by sharing of their heavenly knowledge, and who were punished by God as a result, Aronofsky takes enormous risks here. Using barren and beautiful Icelandic locations, Aronofsky builds a world that appears almost like a prehistoric Mad Max. (Not to mention also ACTUALLY building a to-scale ark in New York state). The men who are descendants of the biblical Cain are almost like wasteland raiders. Meat-eaters and city-builders, they’re aware of their history and their Creator, and they’re pissed about it. Noah’s family seem to stand alone; the caretakers of the earth. And on top of that, this film portrays the Watchers as giant rock creatures, injecting a fantastical, Lord Of The Rings-influenced element which amps up the action-movie feel, but also introduces yet another layer of theological exploration. If one can swallow these “out there” elements that Aronofsky brings into the story, there is a lot to enjoy. I not only swallowed the post-apocalyptic feel, but genuinely dug it. The rock monsters took me a little longer to acclimate to, but on the second viewing of the film I saw them as essential to Aronofsky’s telling of this tale.
Zealotry And Guilt: Noah’s story arc is a painful one to endure, but is boldly realized and fleshed out. The Bible includes a weird footnote in its narrative about a naked, drunken Noah cursing the descendents of his son Ham just before his death. It is largely free of context and Aronofsky and Handel seem to reverse engineer a fascinating story to get us to a place where a drunken, post-flood Noah makes sense. Noah’s experiences of God come in the form of visions. Beautifully executed from a visual perspective, God is never personified and we get the sense that Noah’s visions are open to some interpretation. He gets it largely correct, but as more of his visions appear to come to pass, Noah grows into a bit of a zealot. When he is the most certain of anything, it is that, after the flood, God wishes for mankind to die out and restore nature to it’s Eden-like state, without the evil of man beginning fresh again after the flood. So certain is he, that when his step-daughter Ila (Hermione Granger) becomes pregnant, he insists that he will strike the baby down if it is a girl who can bear children. This is a terrifying segment, with a wild-eyed and newly white-haired Noah stalking and looming about the ark as the baby grows in Ila’s womb. And when Noah ultimately chooses to spare the twin girls she bears, he does so out of love for them, and only at the final moments, but he also becomes convinced that he has failed God. Noah’s zealotry is frightening, and offers a fascinating study of what absolute certainty can do to a person. When he ultimately acts with mercy and defies his zealous nature, he is convinced of his guilt… he has failed God, and when dry land re-appears, he’s become a drunken shell of a man, living isolated from his family.
So much of the “religion” we hear about most can boil down to the loudest zealots making all the big moves, and the daily adherents being kept in check through constant guilt. Aronofsky taps into some of the worst and most frightening elements of religion through his main character’s journey, and the results yield a story that is potentially more insightful than it is satisfying, at least from an adventure film perspective.
Open-Endedness: Ila eventually comes to Noah, once they’ve reached dry land, and after his “failure” to end the reign of the humans, and offers Noah a third path for what may have actually happened with the flood and Noah’s role in it. Perhaps God hadn’t chosen Noah for this task because of his zealotry, but rather because of his love. Perhaps God actually offered Noah the choice of whether to put an end to humankind or to restore it. And Noah’s sparing of his grandchildren was that choice. Ila’s proposal is enough to bring Noah back to his family, and the film leaves us there, with a partially restored family beginning again as the lone survivors of the human race. What I love most about the resolution of the film is that Ila’s reasoning seems to be enough to convince Noah, but we as the audience are living in this supposedly restored and rejuvenated world which the flood was supposed to bring about, and any thinking person knows that humankind remains broken. We may even be bringing the planet down with us. Wouldn’t Noah’s original mission of zealotry… a mission to save the animals who have a right relationship with God, and to wipe out all of human kind… wouldn’t that mission have actually successfully brought about a more perfect planet than the messy and broken one we all inhabit today? Aronofsky doesn’t offer the answer. What was God’s reasoning for all this death and destruction? Why kill so many and not go the full distance? Is Noah a hero or a failure?
I could go on, but this review can’t last until the next great apocalypse. Noah is equal parts rip-roaring, rock monster action/adventure, Matthew Libatique-shot, resplendently beautiful art film, and challenging soul-searching drama. These elements can war against one another and at times it feels like Noah, as a film, may not be big enough to handle all those parts. But just as the connective tissue seems about to burst, Aronofsky injects yet another fascinating idea, effect, shot, visual motif, or plot development that seems to rein it all in and succeed as a powerful meditation on life and faith, doubt and struggle, and that one time when an all-knowing and all-loving God wiped out mankind.
THE PACKAGE
The hour long documentary concerning the making of Noah is among the best behind the scenes home video documentaries I have ever seen. Broken into three logical sections just as the film’s shoot was, the doc begins in Iceland where the film’s sweeping, “pre-apocalyptic wasteland” exteriors were shot under great duress. From a filmmaking perspective, the challenges of shooting in barren Icelandic environments created numerous challenges which this doc explores in fascinating ways. The piece then follows the crew to New York state where they shot all the sequences taking place around the exterior of the ark, including the large battle where the army of Man (led by Ray Winstone) attempts to board the ark. Shot in “night for day”, the crew used massive lighting and rain rigs to capture the entire battle and again, the reality of the challenging production actually adds to the magic of the resulting film. The final chapter concerns the shooting of the ark interior, which was built in a massive sound stage also in New York.
Featuring its own spectacular cinematography, including beautifully set up tracking shots of sets and stages, as well as time-lapse photography and other tricks, this documentary has a strong production value all on its own. It also features a grand mixture of on-set “behind the scenes” footage and interviews with all the key talent of the movie, and tells an incredible story of grand film production. This behind the scenes doc managed to rise above the typical “bonus feature” fare of the average home video release.
Too bad, then, that it is genuinely the only bonus feature on the release. You get the movie, as grand and gorgeous as one can ever dream of a movie being, and this remarkable documentary. That alone is enough for me to be happy to own and continue wrestling with this challenging and difficult and dynamic film. But since it was a major financial success and will likely continue to generate discussion among various religious groups for years (if not decades) to come, I would imagine a more comprehensive home video release someday being made available. (I also just read about a Target-exclusive version of the film in a wooden case which may feature further bonus features, so perhaps even now a more comprehensive version can be purchased than the disc I’m reviewing).
The production of Noah was fraught with strife between Paramount and visionary director Darren Aronofsky, and the financial success of the film came as a bit of a shock after such a tumultuous production. Between the sheer physical undertaking that the production was, utilitizing profoundly isolated locations in Iceland, building an actual ark, etc, and the wrangling for control of the final film between the powers that be, the story of the creation of Noah is almost as fascinating as the final film itself, and will almost certainly result in a more comprehensive home video release down the line. As is, this disc is an excellent, if compact, package. One can enjoy a far above average documentary and a visionary film from one of the most important American filmmakers of this generation, which looks stunning. I recommend the experience.
And I’m Out.