It is not everyday that we get a chance to watch Biblical
stories adapted into major motion pictures. But when such well-loved tales have
taken a dramatic mess, you get to question modern times’ ability to translate them
into huge blockbuster films without compromising good sense and credibility. With
2014’s Noah, we get to become
excited yet uncomfortable audience of a Biblical spoof done in a style like “Star
Wars”-meets-“Transformers”-meets-“Spartacus”-meets-“The Lord of the Rings”-meets-“Game
of Thrones”-meets-“Lego”.
Director Darren Aronofsky has infused wild imaginative ideas
into the story of Noah, a very short chapter in the Book of Genesis. As the religious
story is brief and contains very few details, Aronofsky takes liberty in
providing his own interpretation which is a mixed of ingenuity and madness. At the
start of the film, we see Noah’s back story as a boy who witnessed his father
being slain by a young Tubal-cain. Many years later, Noah has a family of his
own, with wife Naameh and their sons Shem, Ham and Japheth. When he dreams constantly
of a great flood, Noah and his family sets off on a long journey to visit his grandfather
Methuselah. Along the way, they are chased by Tubal-cain and his men, find a
baby girl named Ila who they adopt, and encounter the “Watchers,” fallen angels
who have become stone golems.
After the visit, Noah plants the seed from Eden which
Methuselah had given him and overnight, the entire camp area turns into a
forest. Enlisting the help of his family and of the “Watchers,” Noah begins to
build an ark out of the trees. With Tubal-cain and his crew closing in on them,
Noah will face physical and emotional evils that will challenge his mission of
cleansing the world of its sins.
I believe the main intention of the film is to portray Noah
as an actual human figure, someone who suffers inner conflicts as he balances
his desires and wishes against what he considers as sacred mission and obedience
from the “Creator,” not a sinless guilt-free saints which our parents and
ministers have told us when we were still kids. Director Aronofsky succeeds
with this motive, as we see Noah struggles to protect his family from all
dangers while trying to keep them free from all forms of sins like lust, greed
and self-love. He gets lost between what is true or false, righteous or wicked,
and godly or worldly. He would even sacrifice his own grandchild and destroy
the entire family to atone for their mistakes. In the end, being both the hero and
antihero, Noah is represented as a beefy lumbersexual daddy who is on the verge
of losing his sanity.
Well, I would have bought such story if the film has not crossed
erratically from one genre to another. At one point, there’s that action-adventure
feeling as the story of Cain and the Transformer-Rock hybrids called Watchers
is told. Then Noah’s family embarks on a journey across landscapes that would
make a great National Geographic documentary. When the flood comes, waters from
the sky fall and waters from underneath Earth gust forth in an overwhelming
apocalyptic scene (wait, this is supposed to happen eons ago). Just when I thought
the torture of watching the movie ended, there is still so much time left. So for
more minutes, the movie takes on suspense as two gritty muscular daddies battle
on the ark. And finally, there is tear-jerking family drama as the flood begins
to recede and Noah and his household settle on dry land.
After watching the film, I was reminded of Martin Scorsese’s
1988 masterpiece “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Both were controversial as they
put more human elements to famous Biblical figures. But Noah failed to be as thought-provoking, convincing and powerful as
Scorsese’s film. Even with the stunning performances of Russell Crowe as Noah,
Jennifer Connelly as his wife, Emma Watson as adopted child Ila, AnthonyHopkins as Methuselah, and Ray Winston as Tubal-cain, the film is not believable,
something which will question your faith or the things you believe in. It is
much too wild, imaginative and graphic to be true and compelling. With “The
Last Temptation of Christ,” you will have that grateful feeling in the end that
everything had turned out as the Bible says; but with Noah, there is only that
utter annoyance and disbelief. Even with the main character’s pitiful strife
and trials, I still feel disconnected and unsympathetic towards him.
As it is, Noah is a tasteless version of a
classic story taken from the world’s best-selling book, straying much from the
original material in its ambition of being refreshing, original and exciting. Except
for the great cast and supposedly intriguing core message, the film got lost in
translation as it becomes shrouded in too much CGI effects and graphic details.
As a result, I can only give the film two stars out of five.
0 comments:
Post a Comment