“Why get into this film now?”—You might ask. Well, good question, but I just never felt particularly motivated to throw up a review for it (or any of the movies I’ve seen over the last six weeks) until now.
What Works: Reactions seem to be pretty negative for this movie, and I can’t say that I enjoyed it, but it’s not awful either. It’s made with clear craft and skill (of course, since Darren Aronofsky directed it) and I guess this is about as good as a movie about Noah and the Ark could ever be. Is that enough for most movie critics hoping the movie would be more inspired? No. Is that enough for most crazy Christians who hate that the movie isn’t more faithful? Hell no. Although there’s not much he could have done to make one group happier without making the other group less happy. As is, Noah is probably the best Christian-inspired movie we’ll get all year and an authentic portrait of a man driven near crazy by faith and his belief in the “wickedness” of man.
What Doesn’t: It feels like there’s a better, more alive movie right beneath the surface that’s just afraid to come out. Moments like Noah’s psychedelic flashes (jump cuts of apples, comets, snakes shedding their skin, and floods) hint at a stylish filmmaker growing restless with endless scenes of holy exposition, and you wish there would be a little bit more of that thrown into the mix.
Plus, there’s always been a fundamental flaw in the story of Noah: that only one family on the entire planet is worth saving and God wants everyone else to die. [Including the millions of animals not part of the two-only pairings.] It’s a strange story to be held up as “moral,” since it’s basically a delusion of one self-righteous man to think everyone else is wicked and deserves to be slaughtered.
What I Would Have Done Differently: As I stated before, there’s literally nothing Aronofsky could have done to make everyone happy and if he changes one thing, he’ll get five more complaints. To make a quality, ideas-driven Biblical picture is a thankless task, and I guess I wonder why it was so important to him in the first place. [This is his passion project, something he wanted to make for years.]