THIS IS NOT YOUR SUNDAY SCHOOL NOAH STORY- (Its much better). *A Skeptic Review* In Act 1 of the film we get a brief explanation of the current situation on Planet Earth: Adam & Eve sinned, their son Cain killed his brother Abel. Expelled from Eden, Cains damned descendants go on to industrialize, pollute, ravage, and destroy the entire planet. Utterly destroying the ecosystem, exterminating animal and plant life for their own greed. They leave behind inhospitable blackened mined earth in their wake. A brilliant move by director/writer Darren Aronofsky who took this iconic ancient myth and gave it an urgent & damning ecological message to contemporary audiences. What a great twist on an old tale. Since this angers The Creator, he tells Noah to build an ark to save the animals so he can start Eden again and restore Earths natural ecology. Act 2 involves the building of the ark and the flood. Beautiful cinematography & CGI capture this process aided by a great musical score. This is where the story gets really EPIC and truly fantastical. The fallen come to try to take the Ark from Noah and a Lord of The Rings battle ensues for the Ark. Here the story takes great artistic liberties as supernatural creatures (Not shown in the trailer) join the fight. The most disturbing & harrowing scene in the film follows. As the Ark survives the storm we witness the fallen clinging onto mountain tops, crying, screaming, agonizing, in their futile exercise to survive as the flood waters purge the planet of every living thing. The puritanical Creator insists this is how it has to be. Act 3 consisting of the flood and the renewal of the Planet gets even more disturbing as Noah, in his never ending quest to please God, gets some murderous instructions... The conclusion is a bit confusing and unclear, but Russell Crowe is outstanding as Noah, and Emma Watson gives what is perhaps her greatest performance, easily outdoing all of her work in Harry Potter. The most beautiful and moving scene of the film is also its most relevant and scientific one. Noah is telling the genesis story of creation. Starting with the Big Bang, the creation of galaxies, planets and solar systems, to the terraforming of Planet Earth, the first cells of life, evolution out of the water and onto land. We get a dazzlingly gorgeous visual representation of the entire cosmos and life on Earth. 14 Billion years fast forwarded to represent 6 days. Now man comes on stage. The scene ends with the evil of man. We see silhouettes of ancient men killing each other, every second, the warriors become more contemporary, from Egyptian, to Roman, to medieval, to colonial, and then to the modern soldier. Man had to wait so long to come on stage, only to destroy himself. How haunting, sad, and relevant. Its very easy to take away a humanist message. This is the Noah Story for the 21st century. We dont need god to destroy mankind. In our destruction of nature and each other, we are doing it ourselves. Grade B+
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 07:50:53 +0000
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