Noah

As long as Darren Aronofsky and Clint Mansell keep going back to the style of The Fountain, everything is in the best order, and I just marvel at how this well-known theme can be told purely through characters in epic settings. And it doesn't even matter that Darren turned the script into something like Transformers: Origins. But when Noah's escalating paranoia starts to explicitly infuriate, I start shaking my head at times, and at that point the dramatically mature Emma Watson has to salvage more than she should. Actually, even a day after viewing, I couldn't decipher the puzzle with incredible visuals and annoyance from constant dialogues about the Creator or what is right. But because I'm not sure about any potential second viewing, I won't climb any higher even with the best will in the world. (27/03/2014)

Animals and Manicheans. How do you combine a disaster feature film of biblical proportions with an intimate drama about a father / sons relationship, succession and the moral implications of being "chosen" by the Creator? It’s labor-intensive. Noah alternates between the successful tricks, but at the core ordinary "big compositions" on the border of post-apo, fantasy and new age screensavers with very intimate positions. These are characterized by Darren's precise work with detail of faces and Libatique's contact-raw filming. The first half, which ends with the epic battle of the Ents with the goblins, offers more flashes of attraction, which the more cohesive second half surprisingly takes advantage of. The intimate drama on a schooner full of sleeping animals and Old Testament cruelty has intensity, overlap, and a wonderful thing called the Russell Crowe factor (considering that at one point he plays Noah, Abraham, and himself, it's a gargantuan performance). It is a pity that another dove of peace in the epic breadth of the post-catastrophic landscape kills the impressive catharsis in the form of a gesture, and also the discovery that the whole metaphysical framework of the "creator" is in fact more of a purposeful machination ensuring that "fantastic" things happen in the first half, whilst in the second half heaven is significantly silent and impressively torments the hero. Unfortunately, Noah's message is New-Age banal, i.e., "treasure all living beings, respect them, and multiply in the love that exalts us above innate evil." Noah simply sways between shallow spiritual pop-up and unexpectedly good details. P.S. The greatest miracle of creation is just Divine Emma, isn't it? [60%] (26/03/2014)

The Tolkeinite inside me is surprised to find where the Hobbits disappeared to when Isengard was flooded. The believer inside me is incensed over disrespect to the Word of our Lord and the unbeliever in me just shakes his head in disbelief over that really current “love Gaia" message... In any case, the movie has its own style and is interesting in the best meaning of the word; however much incongruous and slightly (really) slap-dash. Two thirds is a post apocalyptic vegan version of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers which perilously frequently topples on the brink unintentional ludicrousness, but doesn’t fall over it, thanks mainly to the charisma of Russell Crowe. The last third, however, suddenly becomes a heavy, existential intimate psycho-thriller with classic (although unfaithful to the Book) Old Testament dilemmas. And that is utterly outstanding. It just doesn’t have any connection with the preceding catastrophic epic fantasy. (27/03/2014)

A tangle of something philosophical, wrapped in an attractive, visually polished package. Visually graceful and phenomenal in terms of special effecsts, with hard-hitting contact action (thanks to the great Libatique), and plenty of interesting scenes both aesthetically and emotionally. But overall, a strangely conceived biblical story that alternates between pure epicness (panoramas, music, battles) and gloomy melodrama (the ark, relationships, social issues). It works well separately, but when it comes to intertwining the two, it's not as successful. Additionally, Aronofsky in some scenes gets too psychedelic again and unnecessarily gets carried away by his own fantasy, which incredibly irritates me in all of his films, it gives me a headache. I only felt a message or some kind locally, rather than iconically. (29/03/2014)

An ambitious jumble that is nice to look at, but also reflects why Aronofsky’s films get so many mixed responses; it’s packed with epic and fateful stuff, but lacks a strong author’s voice and a coherent motif. It’s held (literally) above water mostly by the actors and the rich narrative, but it’s so overstuffed that nothing else is memorable. (29/01/2019)