Based on the biblical tale of Noah, the man chosen by God to save the good that is left in the world and to rid it of all evil which is destroying his creation.
This film will make you wonder what you can remember about this story, the animals being in twos but it delves deeper than that. You are also taken on an emotional journey with Noah as he struggles to deal with the pressure that is with the mission he is given from the creator. Something that bothered me initially about the film was how quickly we jumped forward what must have been 10 years? I question that as it was never actually confirmed.
I thought the start and the story of Adam and Eve and how they gave in to temptation and then with their sons and how that then lead to the destruction of the world which was originally created. Add in the watchers, which I can only describe and compare to treebeard in Lord of the Rings. It does create a very interesting story. It does not really matter that it has obviously been adapted in a certain way for this film, and it had be wondering what the exact bible story was especially as it got darker towards the end.
Russell Crowe in the title and lead role was always going to be a good choice for this type of film, despite that though something does seem to be missing from this film. It only went so far, it was good at times but it then drifted around and it got a little bit lost. In the sense of it tried to be very epic but that just wasn’t really the best idea.
A Noah is building the ark he pushes his relationship with his middle son to the limits when he does not get him a wife. This causes Ham to really resent his father and not agree with everything he is doing, especially when he then finds himself a girl but Noah leaves her to die as the storm started to get back to the ark. Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah adds a bit of magic and makes things happen, which weren’t supposed to be possible.
Ila and Shem are the only slight love story we have in the film and it is not overly impressive in that sense. But it does serve a purpose to the story and really helps to show how crazy Noah ends up going as his mission continues. The will he or won’t he moment will have you very much on edge, wondering if he really has gone totally mad.
Naameh played by Jennifer Connelly does spend quite a lot of the film crying and trying to convince Noah that she loves him if he did not already know that. But I guess his madness does really change things quite quickly and he loses his family as they wait for signs that land has been found in midst of all of the water from the flood.
I saw this film on Friday night and still a bit undecided on how exactly I feel about it and whether I liked it or not. I just cannot work out what I think about it. I just feel it was missing something, also a little bit disappointing that no real animals were actually used for the film and they were all CGI? I think that obviously shows how film making is going but wouldn’t you expect in the story of Noah at least one real animal would have been used?
Darren Aronofksy does try to do things in a different way and I think this film is certainly different. I wouldn’t say it was really bad, but neither would I say it was really good. It doesn’t tick the epic box but an ok watch.
