TAKE 1: One Man’s Opinion
…because
film is largely subjective
by Frederick William Springer
III
Noah
Release Date: 28 March 2014 Runtime: 138 Minutes
Review Date: 3 June 2014 Rating: 5 (of 6)
The acting here
is superb, you won't get any finer. It
was definitely nice to see Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly reunited as
husband and wife, 13 years since A
Beautiful Mind. It's due to their
performance and those of others that I give Noah
high ratings. That and if you've never
heard the story of Noah before, you're walking in with a clean slate much like
God was making a clean slate of the Earth, then you may want to jump in. If you are familiar with the story of the
ark, than maybe you'll want to see this version as a curiosity. It is totally rewritten--really, Darren
Aronofsky is taking a 6 page story at best and transforming it into a 2+ hour
epic here--with so much to comment on, all spoilers, so don't read on if you
would rather be as shocked as I was.
***
Whether you go by
the Old Testament standard, or one of the other similar stories found in many
other religions and cultures, I'm pretty sure Rock Monsters were never part of
the narrative. Apparently there was also
magic abound by human hands as well, most notably performed by Noah's
grandfather Methuselah, portrayed here by Anthony Hopkins. There's sleeping gas that conveniently works
on animals (putting them into long-term hibernation, not needing any food or
water) but has no effect on the unprotected humans wielding it. Though gun powder was only discovered in the
9th century, here firing weapons were available. And, seemingly, a female being stabbed in the
stomach as a child makes her positively, unquestionably a barren adult; an
adult that is never conclusively said to be betrothed to Shem, Noah's son, yet
engages in sexual intercourse with him.
I somehow don't think the Creator would take too lightly to that.
All these things
would have Noah turning over in his grave, I'm sure, and condemned as outright blasphemous
by the religious ilk. But, then again,
for these religious zealots, I remind them that Noah was supposedly 500-years-old when he had his 3 sons and 600 when the floodwaters came (so his kids in
this movie should have been 100-year-old men, not teens and pre-teens). Noah also lived another 350 years afterwards,
so there's that...
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