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Created Apr 01, 2014 10:47PM PST • Edited Apr 20, 2019 09:23AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Noah is a mashup of Old Testament and Global Warming theologies, one antediluvian, one anti-economic. Oh yeah, there’s also lots of Hollywood fantasy thrown in to make it a 21st century basso profondo action epic. The bizarre result is often ridiculous, but ultimately worthwhile both theologically and entertainingly.

   Ridiculousness aside, the movie is theologically interesting and challenging, full of grace notes and transcendent moments. These include a brilliant evocation of Creation and the kind of elemental family drama found throughout Genesis, with echoes of Abraham being asked to kill his son Isaac included.

   But oh that ridiculousness: It starts with the damning of “industrial society” as the primary cause of the Creator’s wrath. Nevermind that industrial society didn’t start for thousands of years after Noah and has led humanity on a long path of decarbonization. Darren Aronofsky apparently genuflects at the alter of Global Warming, so couldn’t resist polluting one of the greatest stories ever told with risible ecological theology.

   He and cowriter Ari Hendel then wrestled with how to get the ark built. Also how to protect it from evil hordes? They settled on a deus ex machina called Watchers. While Genesis is a book full of seminal deus ex machina stories, Parshah Noach came by its miracles the old fashioned way, without the need of hard-rock Transformers. Worse, Noah’s Watchers are deserving of ridicule, being both poorly rendered and voiced.

   The human characters are anything but poorly rendered or voiced. Russell Crowe’s Noah is monumental, Jennifer Connolley is deeply affecting as his wife, Anthony Hopkins and Ray Winstone are powerful as the oldest man ever and an evil king respectively. Theological archetypes more than people as we know them, this sterling cast makes their travails and transgressions vivid and involving. They save the movie.

   So what if Noah is somewhat leaden. That’s unavoidable for a waterlogged morality tale of utmost historical gravity. So what if Aronofsky and company badly messed with the scriptural story, stepping well into sacrilege. Noah is a hugely interesting and consequential Biblical figure, a new Adam. As performed by the great Crowe, the strengths of this bastardized story well outweigh its weaknesses. Amen to that.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Russell Crowe never gives a bad performance, other than when he’s asked to sing. He does sing briefly, though fortunately it doesn’t tank his otherwise titanic Biblical figure. Variously loving and fierce, he transforms from a man with flowing blond locks to one framed in gray, straight from Biblical Patriarch central casting. His tremendous performance includes one especially mesmerizing scene, when he dialogs with an unseen and unheard Creator about the need to perform a terrible task. The great Crowe voices regret and resistance, followed by acceptance and steely will. Powerful in the extreme, that.

   Jennifer Connelly proves an equal actor as his wife. Her resentment fueled damnation of him is movie acting par excellence.

   Emma Watson has the most screen time aside from those two. She succeeds extremely well as a young woman with extraordinary family problems. Skylar Burke capably plays her as a wounded little girl.

   Supporters

   • Ray Winstone as King Tubal-cain, of the fratricidal Cains, is both commanding and nasty. Unfortunately he bears a resemblance to Anthony Hopkins, leading to confusion in a long movie.
   • Anthony Hopkins was born to play Methuselah, the oldest man who ever lived.
   • Logan Lerman and Douglas Booth are more callow than necessary as Noah’s sons Ham and Shem.
   • Nick Nolte is apparently in the movie somewhere, though I seem to have missed him. Same with Aronofsky regular Mark Margolis.
   • Marton Csokas as Noah’s father Lamech
   • Adam Griffith and Ariane Rinehart play Adam & Eve. Yep, the movie does start in the beginning.
   • Frank Langella provides an imposing off-screen voice.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Very Good 3.5

    Darren Aronofsky’s bravura film has spectacular action pieces throughout, the explosive flood most of all.

    Did he need to mash up other parts of the Book of Genesis with non Biblical sources with contemporary Global Warming angst? The last part he certainly didn’t need. The rest? He stewed himself up a blockbuster, that’s for sure.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play OK 2.5

    “In the beginning” starts the movie and concludes it. In between comes much that is good and more than a little that is bad or ridiculous.

    Man’s sin? Industrialized civilization run amok. Noah’s pure family? Vegetarians who can’t comprehend why someone would kill an animal. Humanity’s purpose? To take care of the animals. Thus does a seminal Biblical epic take on the trappings of a Limousine Liberal’s ecological theology.

    Sexual misconduct? No, that doesn’t seem to be the problem, notwithstanding Noah’s field trip to a teeming city. There he observes human wantonness and cruelty that are clearly hellish. However, that comes well into the film, after we’ve already been informed that “industrialization” is man’s primary sin.

    Lest this criticism seem overwrought, a Daily Beast interview titled Noah is a Global Warming Epic About the Battle Between Religion and Science, Says Cinematographer reveals the filmmakers’ priorities.

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Great 4.0

    100 stuntmen
    300 digital artists

15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.6

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Brutal 3.5

19. Rudeness Profane 2.8

21. Reality

    Supernatural 4.0

    Noah the movie takes a supernatural tale from the Book of Genesis as a jumping off point for a melange of other supernatural happenings.

    As to its Biblical liberties, an article in Slate on the Biblical fidelity covers some of the issues. The Slate article doesn’t source The Watchers, which apparently stem from an ancient text called the Book of Enoch.

    Movie reality aside, Noah is a hugely interesting and consequential Biblical figure, a new Adam. Was he a Jew? No, not really, though he begat the Jews, and the Christians, and the Muslims, as every Western religion has Noah in their traditions. He was civilized in the way that the Jews brought to the world: true to his wife and family, valued his children no matter their sex and was fundamentally kind, notwithstanding the great and horrible tasks his Creator commanded of him. In contrast, the fallen people around him were self-centered, cruel and rapacious.

    The movie pontificates about Man unfairly holding dominion over the Earth and all her creatures, saying we’re just another creature, no better and not exceptional. However, it is Man who saves the creatures. Man, not monkey, not fish nor fowl. So a movie that says Man shouldn’t self-aggrandize his species is a fundamentally self-aggrandizing tale of Homo sapiens. Whoops.

22. Circumstantial Supernatural 4.0

23. Biological Supernatural 3.9

24. Physical Supernatural 4.0