"Noah" (2014) movie review

$125 million.

Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Watson, Douglas Booth and Logan Lerman.

Survivalist take. If you build an ark, a lot of undeserving people will try to get on it.

From a person who saw the preview: "Told in a fantasy type of way a la Lord of the Rings."

Lots of CGI. Ever since "Independence Day," moviemakers have thoroughly enjoyed destroying the whole earth.

IMDB.

Rediscover the epic story of one man and the most remarkable event in our history.

The end of the world ... is just the beginning.

Russell Crowe, Emma Watson

"With a $125 million budget, the film is said to be more of an edgy action epic that depicts a man who fights off his enemies as he prepares for a coming apocalypse, rather than a story of a 'preacher of righteousness' who calls the world to repentance from sin."

"A number of battle scenes are said to fill the film, which in some aspects are reminiscent of Gladiator. Six-armed angels, known as Watchers, are also introduced, 'who came down from Heaven to help fallen humanity by granting them wonders of knowledge from magic to science to stars, metal, and fire.'" <YUCK!>

“Noah”: Aronofsky’s deranged biblical action flick."

Stone giants, battle scenes, a satanic antihero and Russell Crowe's vegan cult leader -- Aronofsky's nutso "Noah."

This mightily strange motion picture, however, is a classic Hollywood blend of “devil’s candy” – a major movie star, the control-freak auteur of “Black Swan,” a budget reported at $130 million and one of the sketchiest episodes in the Abrahamic tradition, drawn from a few sentences in the Book of Genesis – designed to please everyone and likely to please almost no one.

None of them is as interesting as the diabolical and charismatic Tubal-Cain (growly voiced Ray Winstone), king of the Cain faction, who vows to kill Noah and take that damn ark for himself if the promised great flood actually shows up. Tubal-Cain is a great character full of venal and crude humanity, part Milton’s Satan and part Nietzschean Superman, and is also 99 percent made up. (In the Bible he is described as a maker of “all kinds of bronze and iron tools.” That’s it.)

There’s an extremely long-winded theological back story about how these guys are fallen angels who got coated in molten lava, and no, I’m not even kidding. Alert readers of the Bible will recognize them as the mysterious Nephilim, described in Genesis 6 as “sons of God … heroes that were of old” and the source of much exegetical agony.

the word “God” is never used

“Noah” makes the Great Flood a grating dud.

Darren Aronofsky, the genius director who made Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler and Black Swan, pulls another The Fountain this time out, overindulging his grand aspirations for the artiest of arty art that belly flops into pretentious nonsense.

My take

Zohar mine? Jewish midrash: like gold. The substance used to start fires and test for pregnancy.

Kinder than God: the watchers, Noah, Noah's wife, Ila.

Noah believes in a punitive God who wants to eradicate all human life. The authors do understand the outcome of the original story: sin rides the ark with "the good family." They retroject that understanding into Noah's character and make a murderous monster out of him as a consequence. Animals innocent, humans guilty; animals beautiful, humans ugly.

Methuselah couldn't have healed Ila without God's power or against God's will!

Drugged by Methuselah--"vision quest."

Noah adopted Ila--it is arguably the central love story in the film.

Animals alone are innocent, good, beautiful in Noah's eyes.

Noah's wife of her sons: "All they desire is love."

Methuselah

"Who knows what is good? What is wicked?"

"Did you bring me berries?"

Noah's wife: "They are just people."

Noah: "There is no room. Mankind must end. We are all being punished."

Ham to Noah: "She was innocent." -- the girl Noah left to die in a trap.

Noah to God: "I cannot do this."

Noah's wife to Noah: "He asked you to decide if we were worth saving."

Noah gives the covenant blessing to his twin daughters--not to his sons! That means that the Shemites (Semites) are not the heirs of God's promise.

Snakeskin relic? Why that?

The Watchers turn against God to help humans who have been cast out of the Garden for disobedience to God--yuck!

Ila is the central character!

- She loves Ham as well as Shem.

- She is the new Eve. Ham: "I'm glad everything begins anew with you."

- She wants Ham to marry one of her daughters.

- She saves her daughters by singing Noah's lullaby to them.

- She reconciles Noah to the family.