Darren Aronofsky's "Noah" Reviewed
All wet
Who could have guessed it? Javert and Noah are the same person: sad eyed losers who always follow orders, who always get the dirty job done. And while it leads to suicide for Les Miserables cop with a grudge Javert, Darren Aronofsky leads Noah through a god game till he realizes he too has free will.
As Russell Crowe, both men are miserable, depressive sodden images of self-loathing who bulbously fill the movie screens for “Les Miserables” and “Noah” with train wreck solipsism that drgs down anything that touches it like a weight to the bottom of the sea.
Crowe kills off director Darren Aronofskys overlong epic retelling of the Old Testament Noah, the last of the antediluvian Patriarchs. It was to Noah that God told to build an Arc and save two of every living creature and once they were secure in the arc Noah built, God brought down 40 days and nights of rain and drowned everything else.
It is Darren’s Biblically obscure concept that God meant mankind to bred out as well and once Noah and his family died off the world would be left to the other living things. The result is that when his adopted daughter becomes pregnant, all God’s slaughtering is for nothing and Noiah is left to kill the babies.
Darren is a miserable bastard, I’ve disliked every movie he has made but “Noah” is the first to fill me with hatred. A turgid, tired slog to mass murder and rebirth, Russell is a straight drag brooding horrible center figure, his wife, portrayed by Jennifer Connelly is an anorexic whiner, the step daughter, Emma Watson, has neverlooked remotely this bad.
And while I have no real reason to kick about liberties being taken with a myth that got its start over 4000 years, the fallen angels who turn into made of stone transformers, is sci-fi in the middle of Holy story that demands suspension of disbelief at the best of times yet is so central to religious it can be found in the Torah, the Old Testament and the Koran. Any chance of believing the story disappears.
This is a movie without a joyful moment. Not even when the dove with an olive branch arrives is their happiness. Not even when they get off the Arc (Where is the scene of all the animals leaving the Arc for the new world?). All you get is rain and slaughter.
A truly dreadful movie.
Grade: D+
