Noah

Dustin: 4 of 5 stars Nick: 3.5 of 5 stars Average: 3.75 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: Noah is a 2-hour 19-minute movie based on less than 10 pages of the Bible. It stars Russell Crowe and his boat “making movies, making music and fighting ‘round the world”--this time in Iceland, which is the film’s stand-in for the ancient Near East.

Noah is set in a world so overcome by wickedness God chooses to wipe out creation with a flood. However, he sees goodness in a righteous man named Noah (Crowe), and chooses Noah to build an ark in which a male and female of every species will ride out the storm and repopulate the world once the flood is over. In the end *SPOILERS* Noah and his family survive the flood.

Dustin: So what did you think of Noah?

Nick: Very entertaining, even with the dramatics of a soap opera.

Dustin: What do you mean by “dramatics of a soap opera”?

Nick: The story that is created by the writers often falls into camp territory. Noah’s son Ham goes into town and ends up wanting to save a girl he just met, and Noah would not let that happen. This makes Ham brood and plot against his father for most of the film. Then his eldest son Shem gets his adopted sister pregnant, and Noah will kill the child if it is born a girl. The script also adds a character from another part of the Bible named Kubal-Cain. He is the antithesis to Noah and plots with Ham to have him killed. All the while his wife supports him until it comes to Noah slaughtering her future grandkid, though all the other children he left to drown was understandable given that his message came from “the Creator.”

Dustin: What would you say to the critics who say this movie isn’t true to the Bible, which they interpret as a 100 percent accurate depiction of historical events?

Nick: They need to separate their religion from a movie based on a small portion of a very large spiritual text. The story of Noah’s Ark and other incantations are not packed with depth. It’s up to the creators (ha, “creators”) to fill in the gaps and make sense of a story lacking in subtext. I believe Pope Francis approved the movie, which makes me love him all the more. The Pope is either very cool or has an amazing publicist.

Dustin: Most of the people bashing the movie are Fundamentalists who don’t have the ability to separate a movie from the Bible. If it deviates at all from the source material  they’ll call it blasphemous.

Nick: Just like tween lit fans! One very enjoyable thing to do is read the reviews of Noah on IMDb. They are bordering on insanity!

38 people found this review helpful. Think about that for awhile.

Dustin: I particularly enjoyed the visuals in this movie, and consider some sequences works of art. Artists have a long tradition of depicting and interpreting Biblical scenes, and I think moments in this movie can be considered part of that tradition. One particular moment has Noah reciting the story of creation from the book of Genesis, while the images on the screen show the Big Bang and evolution. I imagine this doesn’t go over well with Fundamentalists, but it was very artistic and well done.

Nick: The shots of all Noah’s hallucinations and stories were by far my favorite parts. Cain and Abel’s silhouettes against the backdrop of dawn, a glowing female body reaching for an apple, and the exile of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.

Dustin: I particularly enjoyed the giant rock monster things. They looked realistic, even though they were obviously CGIs, with expressive, sympathetic faces. I also liked when they started fighting the hordes of humans trying to bum-rush their way onto the ark.

Nick: The giant rock monsters (fallen angels) were entertaining, but also seems to be what both religious and non-religious people point out as one of the many reasons as to why they hated the movie. Seriously, it’s worth seeing Noah just to understand the IMDb user reviews.

Dustin: I wondered if this movie wasn’t a little too strange for general audiences. I was in an audience with a lot of families. I didn’t really consider it a “family” film. I thought the movie did a good job showing why humanity needed to be wiped out. Humans had devastated the earth’s natural resources and had resorted to cannibalism, taking children from mothers to be eaten. It was creepy on an archetypical level.

Nick: Religious parents often look past that when the film is Biblical based, which will teach their children their favorite tales of morality. Noah definitely has the Darren Aronofsky feel. As you say its very strange, if not twisted.

Dustin: The movie differed from the Bible in some of the details, and I don’t know whether the religious folk are complaining about these. For example, at the end, rather than Noah cursing Ham for seeing him naked and passed out drunk, it made it seem like it was Ham’s choice to leave. This seemed to be more in character for how they were portrayed in the film, but was an important difference, I think.

Nick: One element of the film that could have been better was the dialogue. What ever the characters said seemed to be things that have been explained through visuals or hamfisted in terms of creating emotional scenes (as I talked of before). For me the film would have been better with a little dialogue, which when used correctly can go a long way.

Dustin: I got the feeling they were trying to make the dialogue sound Biblical. It’s not easy to do.

Nick: The dialogue seemed a mix between Biblical, Shakespearean, English theater and poor TV drama. The acting was good, but beyond Russel Crowe, non-famous actors would have been a plus. I kept seeing Hermione Granger and Percy Jackson. This didn’t happen when these two stars were together in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but I couldn’t escape their blockbuster characters during this film.

Dustin: I think this is a good movie for the artsy crowd. If you know you’ll be offended by it, just skip it, because nothing is going to change your mind. I think it is too intense for young children, so I wouldn’t recommend Christian families making a family outing out of this. I also think it is too strange for your average movie-goer. But with it being a big-budget movie, it needs those audiences.