Noah ("spoiler" alert)*

Noah is the 2014 Biblical epic directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone and Anthony Hopkins.  My wife was interested in it due to it also starring Emma Watson, who plays Hermione of Harry Potter fame.  My brother said Noah was a bad movie after it was already on the way to me from Netflix, and although my brother and I have a very similar interest in movies, he hated Avatar so we don't agree on everything.  And I am fascinated by religion and mythology, so after a DVD copy arrived in the mail there was really no way I could resist seeing for myself.  Genesis is one of my favorite books of the Bible.

Everyone raised in an Abrahamic tradition has heard of the Noah's ark and the great flood.  (Beyond that, the Flood Myth exist in virtually every world mythology.)  In the Bible, the flood narrative occurs in Genesis 6-9.  That's only a couple mere pages of text, so there was no question that the screenplay of Noah would have to fill-in and expand the story.  Some mythology-inspired films are grounded in historical research and attempt to tell the story of what could have really happened as a basis for the legend, like Troy.  I can appreciate those films for what they are, but other mythological films keep the fantastic elements (or "miracles" if you prefer) which I can also enjoy.

In the beginning (see what I did there), the film shows the titular character as a child.  Noah's father Lamech hands down a shed snake skin as apparently is the father/eldest-son tradition in the line of Seth, right before the film's main antagonist, Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone), shows up and kills Noah's father with Noah watching in hiding.  The biblical Tubal-Cain is the last name in the  seemingly pointless genealogy of Cain (Genesis 4:22) which is what I would have done if I had made this film.  Both characters' name directly references Cain, the first murderer, and in the film Tubal-Cain is logically the leader of a population of Cain's descendants.  However, in the Bible, Noah's father lived 595 years after the birth of Noah, so this is film is more realistic... so far.

To get it out of the way, I'll comment on the snake skin here.  The authors of Genesis villainized the serpent because the snake's ability to shed its skin and seem renewed is a common symbol of fertility in world mythologies including in ancient Canaan.  The Canaanite religions surrounding the Israelites were a constant temptation to lead people astray from "the one true God" of their own people (so snake = bad).  Knowing what snake skin shedding really means, I thought that maybe the filmmakers were going for Noah being instrumental in the story of the renewal of the Earth, despite the fact that would be incorrect from a historical perspective.  So I looked up some interviews with the writers, and no.  They said the snake in the Garden of Eden equals sin, and the shed skin is the innocence left behind.  So at least they are keeping the symbolism within the context of the original work.

Years later, the adult Noah (Russell Crowe) has a wife and two of his three biblical sons, Shem and Ham.  Noah's wife (Jennifer Connelly) was not named in the scripture, but in the movie her name is Naameh, the name that Jewish tradition has given her (a nice touch).  However Connelly's character is largely forgettable in this film so I will just refer to her as "Noah's wife" from here on out.  Noah's young family happens upon a village that has recently been marauded by Tubal-Cain's men, and all are dead except a young girl named Ila who is horrifically slashed across an ovary.  They rescue her, mend her and adopt her.  More years later, the character has grown up to be Emma Watson and her character is romantically attached to Shem.  Ila views Noah as a father figure, and she is clearly the lead female role in this film.  Shem's wife is also not named in the Bible, and my research has not been able to determine how the film-makers came up with this name, so they may have just made it up.  I will just refer to her character as "Hermione" from here on out.  The story's advance to its primary time frame also brings Noah's third son Japheth (still only a boy though).

The film is infused with modern ecological value which I certainly do appreciate in general, but it just seems out of place in a story based on a book that has God telling mankind to subdue the earth and take dominion over all living things.  In the Bible, God favored Abel's animal offering over Cain's vegetable one, but in the film, Cain's descendants are meat-eaters while Noah's clan are vegetarians.  The film's Noah is the steward of the Earth that chastises his son for unnecessarily picking a flower.  The antediluvian world is portrayed in the film as a desolate wasteland where plantlife is rare and the land has been overmined to near-ruin by Tubal-Cain's people.  Noah's family is hounded by Tubal-Cain's hoards so they are on the run, and Noah is haunted by vivid dreams of the destruction of the Earth by a flood.  He seeks out the counsel of Methuselah.

On the way to Methuselah's mountain, Noah's family encounters... giant rock monsters!  They despise the wickedness that humanity has become, but explain that they were angels who had defied God's orders by attempting to help the early humans who had been cast out of Eden, so God had punished them by trapping their divine essence in the bodies of giant rock creatures bound to Earth.  This seems to be influenced by the Bible's cryptic reference to the daughters of men having children by the sons of God at the beginning of the flood narrative (Genesis 6:4) and perhaps other references to giants in the Bible, but one thing was clear - this film is now firmly in the realm of fantasy/the miraculous.  In the film these bizarre creatures go by the angelic name of Watchers, but I will refer to them as the "rock monsters" from here on out.

Noah reaches the mountain of his grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins), whom Noah has heard of but apparently never met.  They attempt to interpret Noah's dreams, and Methuselah gives Noah a seed from the Garden of Eden. Cool!  When Noah plants the seed, it quickly grows into an an entire forest surrounding them!  Awesome!  (Good thing Adam and Eve didn't eat any fruit with that seed in it!)  Now they have wood to build an ark.  The rock monsters see this miracle and commit to helping Noah build the ark in an attempt to redeem themselves to God.

Build it, and they will come.  Before the ark is even finished, the birds and then later the land animals all come to the ark, apparently guided by the unseen and unheard hand of God.  Noah's family has magic incense that not only puts all the animals to sleep (but not humans), it is a magical sleep that the animals cannot wake up from until woken up, and they are perfectly in suspended animation so they do not hunger or thirst while asleep.  We later see that these effects last the better part of a year!

Tubal-Cain harasses Noah during the building of the ark, jealous that God hasn't picked him to survive, but backs off because of the giant rock monsters. After demanding a response from God as to why he wasn't chosen to survive and not getting one (cursing at the sky), he resolves to attack Noah and take the ark.  Tubal-Cain and his men are shown making weapons out of bronze and iron, a reference to the biblical Tubal-Cain being a metalworker in Genesis 4:22.  Nice.

As the ark nears completion, Noah sneaks into a village of Tubal-Cain's people at night to search for wives for Ham and Japheth, but is disgusted by their wickedness so gives up.  Imagining that the few flood survivors will have to reseed the Earth with humanity, Hermione despairs over her infertility making her an unsuitable mate for Shem, while Ham is miffed that he doesn't get a mate at all.  Ham runs off in a huff, and Hermione, feeling sorry for him, runs after him.

While searching for Ham, Hermione stumbles across old Methuselah who is completely unconcerned about the coming flood, foraging for berries on the ground in the forest which is apparently one of the last things to do on his bucket list.  In the spirit of multiple similar miracles elsewhere in the Bible, Methuselah blesses the union of Hermione to his great-grandson Shem which results in her immediately becoming fertile, then he goes back to hunting for the berries.  Meanwhile Noah sends Shem to retrieve Ham and Hermione.  When Shem finds her first, she immediately jumps on him and they do it right there on the ground of the forest in celebration of her newfound fertility, both of them completely forgetting about Ham.  Seriously!

Meanwhile Ham finds a single living (traumatized) girl in a trench loaded with dead bodies, and there they fall in love.  Seriously!  Her name is Na'el, which is a shortening of a name Jewish tradition assigned to Ham's wife (nice touch).  He finally convinces her to come back to the ark with him, but Tubal-Cain's army is quickly approaching for their assault on the ark.  As they run for it, Na'el's foot gets caught in an animal trap and Ham can't get her out.  Noah suddenly shows up and urges Ham to go back to the ship, as if he is going to free her, and then he leaves just her to get trampled to death!

As it rains, there is an epicish battle outside the ark: Noah and the giant rock monsters vs. Tubal-Cain's army.  Tubal-Cain figures out the monsters have weak spots in the crevices of their rock bodies, and jamming a spear into their inner molten core causes them to explode.  As each one explodes, their inner angelic light-bodies are shown to be released from their rock-monster form and fly strait up to Heaven, finally forgiven for helping humans (by helping humans).  Thanks to the sacrifice of all the rock monsters, Noah wins the battle and gets the ark closed-up, but unbeknownst to Noah's family, a wounded Tubal-Cain sneaks aboard the ship and hides with some of the sleeping animals.  Ham finds him but Tubal-Cain convinces Ham to keep his presence secret from the others, and to betray his father for letting his girl die and denying him a mate.  Noah's wife uses another miracle herb as an ancient pregnancy test which confirms that Shem and Emma Watson have conceived a child earlier that day.  This trouble's Noah.

After the flood waters rise and everyone outside the ship dies, Noah tells the tale of Creation from Genesis to his family while the film presents imagery based on the modern scientific understanding of the the Big Bang and planetary formation (even showing Theia impacting the Earth to form the Moon).  I love science, but what was the point of all that?  This film is clearly a fantasy based on ancient scripture written by people who believed the Earth was flat.  And there are angel/rock monsters, prey and predator marching side-by-side in peace, magic suspended animation incense and a magic seed that instantly grow into a huge forest.  There was absolutely no need try to shoehorn any science into this film, which is like trying to jam a square peg into a round hole.  Over 2000 years after it was written by Israelite priests, Genesis still has a lot of literary value, but the cosmology described can't be taken literally by rational people today.  Showing real science while saying something else only destroys the disbelief suspension needed to enjoy a movie like this.  But that's not the worst thing about this film.

During the flood, Noah informs his family that God's intentions are for them to save the animals, but for the humans all to live the rest of their lives without reproducing.  Humans have ruined God's perfect Earth, so they must just die off.  Furthermore, if Hermione's child is a boy, he can live out his years and be the last man alive instead of Japheth.  If it is born a girl, she must be immediately killed upon birth.  WTH?!?!  So the drama of the film is boiled down to whether the title character will murder his own grandchild or not!  Jennifer Connelly's acting chops come in when Noah's wife is pleading with Noah not to be nutball and kill his grandchild.

During the months that the ship is floating on the flood, Tubal-Cain's wound is healed, and he lives off sleeping animals which he eats raw.  Shem and Hermione have prepared a small boat with supplies so they can escape the ark and save the baby, but Noah discovers it and destroys the life raft.  Hermione goes into labor, but while Noah waits outside the room with a knife, Ham comes and tells his father that some animals have woken up and started eating each other.  Of course this is a trap to lure Noah back where Tubal-Cain can ambush and kill him.  A brawl breaks out and Shem joins the brawl against his father.  Ham is standing there watching with a knife, not sure who he should help. Ham ends up stabbing Tubal-Cain and the ark crashes into a mountain which flings Tubal-Cain near the edge so Noah kicks him off to his death.  NOW only the "righteous" are left.

Hermione gives birth to twin girls, and Noah goes back to kill them both.  Pleading with him to allow her to at least calm them first, she does and he holds the knife over the first one.  Hermione tells him to do it quick so they don't suffer... but he finally decides he can't do it.  This recalls another Genesis patriarch, Noah's biblical descendant Abraham, who was told by God to sacrifice his son as a test, but told him not to at the last second.  So, in the film, the future of humanity is saved by Noah.  Later on the mountain, Noah gets drunk on wine but thankfully Ham is not cursed.  Ham goes off on his own and Noah cries.   Noah has a conversation with Hermione and she explains the meaning of the film.  God put the fate of the human race in Noah's hands, leaving it up to him.  Back on the ark, Noah had had a moment very similar to Tubal-Cain's earlier one, yelling at the sky demanding a direct response from God that also never came.

I can understand this idea because I know the Bible is not the infallible word of God handed down to mankind already spelled out on a stone.  The Bible is a compilation of many different books written over the course of several hundred years by many different authors who each interpret God and experience divine inspiration in their own ways.  In the Bible's version of the story, God speaks directly to Noah, explicitly telling him to build the ark (even providing very specific dimensions) because Noah and his family are righteous.  The biblical Noah just did exactly what he was told to do.  There were no dreams to interpret and NO question that God wanted Noah and his family to to repopulate the human race on Earth.

Noah taking God's place in the decision of his own righteousness is another attempt by this film to modernize the story to make it more relatable to the audience.  In real life, the divine essence usually does not speak directly and clearly as God does to the patriarchs in the Bible.  We have to interpret the meaning of things the best we can and let the divine work through our own hearts.  In that respect, I can really appreciate the intended message of the film.

However, I don't feel the same way about the vehicle for this message.  Noah's earlier misinterpretation of God's intentions are what caused the problem in the first place.  Noah not getting a direct answer from God so coming to his own determination that God wants him to kill babies is insanity.  How many wacko cult leaders do the same thing and kill their followers?  How many people in history have killed others in the name of God, because that is how THEY interpret God's intention?

In this film, Noah is full-blown psychopath!  In the Bible, Abraham is a blind-faith robot, a despicable human being who was actually going to kill his son just because he was told to.  (If any god told me to kill my son, I'd find a new god!)  However the biblical Abraham was told directly by God to murder a child, which is not quite as bad as the cinematic Noah who comes to that sick conclusion on his own.

My brother was right.  While there a few interesting things here and there, overall this movie was horrible.  I pray that Ridley Scott and Christian Bale's Moses movie is better.  Exodus: Gods and Kings comes out 12/12/14.

* The term "spoiler" assumes that the movie could be ruined by learning plot points before seeing it.  When the movie sucks like this one, you're better off reading this review than seeing the movie.