Noah

In recent past we have seen quite a number of religious/spiritual/inspirational films, i.e. "Son of God", "God's Not Dead", and now we have in the offing, "Noah". I'm sure it's of no coincidence of the timing since Easter is right around the corner. So if one is 'searching', one doesn't have too far to look for something inspirational and spiritual.

The story, inspired by the Old Testament teachings of the bible, comes from the book of Genesis involving a man, Noah (Russell Crowe) chosen by God to undertake a momentous mission of building a vessel--an ark to save his family consisting of wife, Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman), Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll) and an adopted daughter, Ila (Emma Watson), and all creatures and birds of the air on the planet from a deluge. Because of man's continuous, violent sin, God plans on flooding the entire world to rid of the creation he was once happy with, but now no more. Noah was walking with God intently, so God gave Noah visions of what to do and when to do it. No one was willing to listen because of their sin, so Noah had to be content with getting the ark built and make sure all the animals were accounted for.
This film spans from Noah's youth and ends with the ark making a final landing on solid ground after the rains subsided. A lot of this is what transpired while they were on the ark for the 150 days while the world was being flooded.

Others to round out the cast are Ray Winstone as Tubal-Cain, Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah, Nick Nolte as Samyaza, Mark Margolis as Magog, Marton Csokas as Lamech, and Kevin Durand as Rameel.

This was effectively well paced by director Darren Aronofsky ("Pi" '98, "Requiem for a Dream" 2000, "The Fountain" '06, "The Wrestler" '08, "Black Swan" '10). His resume is rather eclectic which is healthy, because otherwise he would fall into the trap of so many others as being pigeon-holed. So many directors stay in their 'comfort zone' depending on their genre, so it's a breath of fresh air to see that some directors actually prefer not to stay in that zone. It was written by Aronofsky and Ari Handel. OK, I took a peek at the biblical source of this part of the bible and there are a few inconsistencies between this and its inspirational source. 1) The Old Testament says that those that were housed in the ark were Noah, his wife, two sons and his son's wives. In this, there were no wives and the Old Testament makes no mention of an adopted daughter of Noah's. 2) There is no mention of Tubal-Cain stowing away on the ark in the O.T., however this film mentions that. 3) The O. T. makes mention of large giants roaming the land, but nothing about 'rock monsters' is mentioned as with this film. Considering these errors, it was still well written and still gives us that epic story in an incredibly grandiose way. Speaking of grandiose, the visual effects predominantly created by ILM (Industrial, Light & Magic) were absolutely seamless, and coupled with an IMAX format, the presentation was awesome.

All in all, this was not a totally accurate, scripturally speaking, version of Noah and the ark, but there's so much more going on here that it still has that ability to cause one to think well beyond the end credits.

Out of 4 Stars: 3                            Rated: PG-13                            138mins.