Thursday, August 28, 2014

Noah (Movie Review by Bob Racine)



                                  2 hrs & 17 min, color, 2014

Biblical movies do not come any more large scale than this one.  Certainly it is the most elaborate of any attempt yet to pump life into the ancient fable of the man assigned by God to the task of saving the world from total destruction by the flood waters.  Though the picture has racked up big grosses, it does not seem to speak to people of all faiths and persuasions and current mindsets.  In a word, it is not a movie for everyone, for all tastes, not even for all secular interests.  To the extent that it speaks on behalf of human survival and the value of even the smallest morsel of life on this earth it rings a somewhat momentous bell, one deserving to be heard.  But there is much more in it to be contended with, and that additional content is what divides one audience from another.  It forces one to determine where she/he stands in relation to cosmological assumptions. 

Let me explain:

“Noah” is the movie for you, if you are comfortable with its concept of deity.  In this Old Testament myth, God is an arbitrary ruler and manipulator of the forces of nature, a vengeful scourge of human masses, and, I might add, a deceiver, a trickster, a silent fury.  By his silence he tantalizes his enemies as well as his followers and messes with their minds so as to push them close to the bounds of sanity and sobriety to get what he wants from them.

 “Noah” is the movie for you if you can abide a three-decker universe, the earth as a plain between an upper heaven and a subterranean hell. 

“Noah” is the movie for you, if you do not mind keeping company for two hours with savagery, brutality and bestiality portrayed as means of righteous purification. 

“Noah” is the movie for you if you like your heroes rugged and raw, stubborn and prone to delusion.

Russell Crowe’s portrayal of the man is beyond reproach, as are the fine performances by Jennifer Connelly as Noah’s wife and Emma Watson as his daughter-in-law.   Crowe makes the man as human as any mythological figure could ever be.  As long as the script concentrates on his personal struggle to protect his family and ascertain the will of the Almighty, it rings home.  Any of us who are frightened and worried by what we read in the papers and hear on television news broadcasts about the encroachment of bald evil across the globe in so many forms or the threat of ecological holocaust can feel some identification with him – until he sheds the vestments of common sense and loses his mental grip.  To become protective of his own at such a time is understandable, but when he equates the divine will with self-destructive, drunken cravings, he becomes a creature hard to identify, something other-worldly and almost monstrous. 

And now I would like to add one more note of qualification:  “Noah” is the movie for you, if you are content with an obscure and presumptuous approach to the subject of evil.   Evil is never defined in the story, even though it is supposed to be the reason for all the drownings and slayings.  We are taken through quick sketches of old wars during the generations from Adam and Eve until the arrival of Noah – the descendents of Cain killing people, etc.  But what is the primal cause and explanation for this evil?  What has gone wrong in the interplay of fallible races and peoples that blood has been so exceedingly shed?  Mere overviews and summaries will not suffice.  We arrive too late in the lengthy saga to get any real insight into how God was driven to destroy “the wicked.”  People are seemingly wicked simply because they oppose Noah, and we know that that could not be true.  

I am grateful for the fact that we never have to listen to God speaking in a human voice.  God remains mysterious, relating to the obedient through intuition and instinct.  Revelation does not come about easily.  No handwriting in the sky and no oracles!  I am grateful for that.  But evil in this picture never takes on dimensionality.  The brutes are just there, and the armed warfare goes on and on – at too much length for my taste.  And what was the point of writing Methuselah into the script?  It is always something of a pleasure to watch Anthony Hopkins at work, but why has Director/Writer Darren Aronofsky and his co-writer Ari Handel given him so little to do?  His part in preparing Noah for the flood is somewhat vague.

Perusing the footage, it appears that a “cast of thousands” has been employed in the making of the film.  When I was growing up, such an advertising claim was considered to be a drawing factor in the marketing of many a big budget spectacle.  But now we have computer generation, and the hordes can be simulated, and in my estimation this device has been overdone.  I have spoken about this in an earlier writing and I will say it again.  The Special Effects people seem to think that what they now have the capacity to do they must do.  If it can be done, throw everything you have got into it and do not worry about excess.  What has become of balance?   Would it not have been enough for Noah to be faced with a small local tribe when getting the Ark built and getting it off the ground?  But no, they have to have him facing a swarming armada of faceless warriors bearing weapons that look as if they have been forged in a foundry.  That early in civilization!?  The drubbing that these marauders take seems to require divine intervention in the form of hideous giants who claim to be fallen angels.  Humanity is supposed to be scattered all through the known world, so how convincing is it that all living flesh seems to know of what Noah is up to?   Did they read about it on Facebook? 

It is not until the story turns personal and domestic (at last) that it began to grip me on a somewhat rewarding emotional level.  In the last hour, after the enemy has been vanquished and the floods begin, we find Noah’s household divided.  His three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, are all in hateful conflict with their father and for quite plausible reasons, as are the wife and the daughter-in-law.  They all have to contend with Noah’s psychosis, his obsession with wiping humanity off the map, even to the extent of killing his infant twin granddaughters.  I was profoundly shaken by the internal battle he had to fight to rediscover his heart of love.  But oh the intricate plot we have to plod through on the way to this emotional catharsis!

From time to time we hear of someone or some group who claim they have found the remnant of Noah’s Ark on some mountain or in some archeological dig.  The most enlightened of us will look askance at such claims.  The only place where the Ark will ever be found is in the pages of Genesis.  The story is not history; it is mythology, and mythology can only come meaningfully to life if it succeeds as metaphor.  In this department I find the long tedious epic seriously lacking. 


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

No comments:

Post a Comment