Noah (2014)

Title: Noah (2014)

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Cast: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Emma Watson, Anthony Hopkins, Logan Lerman

Just so you guys know where I’m coming from with this review, I’m not a Christian, but I’ll watch movies like Noah because I love movies and I love how they attempt to wow us, how they comment on humanity and how they try to entertain us. Biblical movies are an interesting bunch because if done wrong, they will always end up pissing somebody off, probably a Christian. But to me, biblical movies are as entertaining as any other fantasy film, what matters to me when I watch any film is if it’s entertaining or moving somehow, if it has something to say. I went to see The Passion of the Christ (2005) to see what the big deal was all about and to my surprise I ended up being genuinely moved by some moments in the film. Any habitual film goer and book worm finds it interesting to see a book they’ve read come to life in some way, so that's the mentality I go with when I go see movies like this one.  So my status as ‘unbeliever’ does not stop me from enjoying films that deal with Christian themes. In fact, since I am a former Christian; I can enjoy them on a whole other level because I know the source material. I read the bible a couple of times back in my church going days, so I know the text and I know when a film is stretching the limits of their ‘artistic liberties’, case in point Aronofsky’s Noah and its myriad ways of telling a different story then the one depicted in the bible. On this review I pinpoint the specific elements that aren’t related to Noah’s tale, so if you don’t want certain elements spoiled for you, you’ve been warned!

For those of you who haven’t read the tale of Noah, this is the story of a man who is contacted by God himself. God tells him that he is going to be destroying every human on the planet because man had become evil, corrupt and violent. In other words, God wants to reboot humanity. Yet Noah and his family are lucky; In Gods eyes they are the only good people left in the whole entire planet. The bible says that Noah was “righteous” and “blameless” amongst the people of his time, so when god’s wrath comes down on the earth through a massive planet wide flood, Noah and his family will get a free ticket to survival. But before the rain starts to fall, God tells Noah to build an ark and put two of all the animals in the world in it so they will survive the flood. That’s the gist of it. And that's essentially what you'll get in this film, the problem is that along with it, you'll get a bunch of other elements that have nothing to do with the bible, in fact, they are so alien to the story of Noah that they just might completely take you out of the film. 

When it comes to biblical movies, as a filmmaker, you have to be very careful. You don’t won’t to deviate too far away from the source material because then you’ll have Christian’s boycotting your film and you don’t want that because it could mean the death of your film. You don’t want to anger your target audience, which is basically what this movie undoubtedly does. It has so many elements that are not in the bible! What elements am I talking about? Well, for example, in the film Anthony Hopkins plays Methuselah, who according to the bible was one of the oldest humans to ever exist, so okay, we’re good till there…but then Aronofsky gives Methuselah magical powers? Now I don’t find that all that weird because the bible actually acknowledges magic as being something real. The problem is that in Noah’s story, Methuselah is not a practitioner of magic! Now the bible talks about magicians and sorcerers, but it doesn’t say that Methuselah was one of them. The artistic liberties don’t stop there.

Then we have the most controversial element of the film, the giant rock creatures. I know right? Now strange creatures aren’t all that controversial to me when it comes to the bible because the bible talks about dragons, unicorns, creatures with ten heads, four faces and a whole cornucopia of strange beings, but the thing with the rock creatures that aid Noah in constructing the ark is that they are not in the bible, at all, and so right here is where Christians will put a screeching halt on this movie and say its heresy. I’ve yet to understand why Aronofsky chose to use these creatures as part of the story. I mean, did he do it on purpose to piss of Christians and get them to go to the movies? Was it to get everyone talking about it? Some sort of publicity stunt to get people talking furiously about the film? In either case, it’s a risky move because this could go either way. It could get  Christians to boycott the film and call Aronofksy the Antichrist, or it could make people want to see the film more. Now knowing how Christians react to films like this, I think it will make them see the movie in droves; just to see what the big deal was all about. But there’s no way of denying that Aronofsky took a huge risk here. 

To top things off, Aronofsky depicts Noah all wrong. You see, in this film Noah thinks that God is bringing the flood because he wants to completely eradicate humans from the face of the earth, when in reality, it’s the complete opposite. Allow me to explain. True; God does feel disappointed with humanity and wants to wipe them out, but in the bible, God clearly states to Noah that he wants for humanity and animals to continue living; I mean that’s the whole point behind saving the animals, so that after the flood is through they can roam the land once again and propagate, it goes without saying that God wants to save Noah and his family for the exact same reason. For all intents and purposes, God wants humanity to continue. But for some reason, Aronofsky’s Noah thinks he and his family are meant to be the last humans on the planet and that they are not to have babies? So when one of Noah’s family members becomes pregnant he thinks he has to kill the babies? That whole thing? So not in the bible! This course of action makes Noah look evil and crazy somehow. Now killing your children in the name of God is not something unheard of in the bible (just ask Abraham!) but again, this does not happen to Noah in the bible.

Now if you’re keen on reading between the lines and enjoy extrapolating on ideas and possible interpretations of what we see in films, then you might infer, as I have, that Aronofsky is actually trying to point at some particularly hard to swallow elements in the bible. Through Methuselah and his use of magic, Aronofsky points at the fact that in the bible, magic is real, and condemned, which is a preposterous idea in my book, hell even sorcerers are real in the bible. Through the now infamous rock creatures, Aronofsky seems to be saying we shouldn’t find them so strange, after all, the bible talks about talking snakes, giants roaming the earth and even dragons! By depicting Noah as a man who thinks he has to kill babies in the name of God, well, Abraham was going to do that at some point, which if you ask me is the craziest part of the bible, and one that I am completely against. Honestly, if God told me to kill my child I’d scream from the top of my lungs “HELL NO!”; yet I’ve personally met Christians who say they would kill their child if God asked them to. And to me that’s just crazy. So through his depiction of Noah, Aronofsky addresses issues of blind fanatism in religion.   

Aronofsky is one of my favorite filmmakers, he’s made some truly amazing films and the question remains, is Noah one of them? I’m not gonna say it’s a terrible film or badly acted or written, because it’s quite the opposite. The cast is amazing, the visual effects work astounding, the only real problem is that it’s not the story you might expect. Arnofsky takes incredible liberties with the text in order to say what he wants to say. There’s no doubt in my mind that these elements will irk some people out there. I’m just saying, if you’re going to see Noah, don’t expect to see the biblical story represented faithfully, Noah was just Aronofksy playing around with biblical themes and ultimately, if you ask me, pointing a finger at the more difficult to accept elements from the bible. Discuss!

Rating: 4 out of 5  

     

Dark City (1998)

Title: Dark City: Director’s Cut (1998)

Director: Alex Proyas

Cast: Rufus Sewell, Jennifer Connelly, Kiefer Sutherland, William Hurt, Richard O’Brien  

Dark City was a victim of the Titanic syndrome, an ailment that struck any of the films that were unfortunate enough to be released during the time that James Cameron’s Titanic (1998) was cruising through theaters. But let’s face it, Titanic wasn’t the only element Dark City had going against it. To begin with, Dark City is a dark brooding film that most people would find either: a) boring b) confusing or c) too talky. But for the right group of people, Dark City would prove to be an engrossing, gothic tale of lost identities and discovering one’s true self, one’s true potential. You see, this is the story of John Murdoch, a man who wakes up one day, not knowing who he is. He does know one thing though: something is seriously wrong in this city! You see, a strange thing happens when the clocks strike twelve; everyone in the city falls asleep and things begin to change. Literally, the whole city begins to contort and twist until by the end of the event, the city is completely different, and as the city changes, so do the people who inhabit it. At one point you might have been a humble blue collar worker, but by the end of the change, you might end up being a member of high society. Strange beings dressed in black go around the city changing things, what’s really going on here? And why doesn’t John Murdock fall under the spell that everybody seems to be so susceptible to? Is there something special about John Murdoch?

Dark City was yet another one of those movies that studios don’t know how to sell. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about films is that when a studio and a director get cold feet, the movie will suffer.  The problem is the general feeling of uncertainty as to how audiences will receive the film. Once this happens, the studio looses faith in the project and they won’t market it properly, because they figure what’s the point of spending money in a movie they think will tank? On top of that, the filmmaker looses faith in his original vision which usually means he or she will edit the film down to a more digestible form, dumbing it down in hopes that audiences will “get it”. A similar thing happened with Ridley Scott’s fantasy film, Legend (1985). When Scott turned in his cut of Legend and showed it to a test audience, the film scored horribly. Scott, terrified that his movie would tank edited the film down, shot a couple of new scenes to make the film “cooler” and added the more contemporary Tangerine Dream soundtrack as opposed to the original classical score. Sadly, the film tanked anyways. In situations like these, I think it’s best for directors to stick to their guns and their original artistic vision. But they never do, because when there’s so many millions of dollars at stake, everybody gets cold feet. Especially when this is your second film and you want to establish yourself as a profitable filmmaker the way Proya’s was at the time of making Dark City.

So Alex Proyas made the changes he had to in order to make Dark City more digestible to audiences. He added in a voice over that “explained” everything before hand to audiences, not unlike the voice over that was added to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982). I’m using Ridley Scott as an example a lot because he is a director that has faced this situation often, making a film that studios are uncertain of. Weird thing with films like this is that years pass, the film becomes a cult classic and then the inevitable “director’s cut” of the film is released, which is what happened with Dark City.  People discovered it on home video after its initial theatrical release and then got its directors cut. The changes aren’t all that huge, but they do make the film more complete. The biggest changes I detected were the elimination of the introductory voice over, some scenes are longer, with more expository dialog, also Jennifer Connelly actually sings with her own voice in her night club scenes, as opposed to getting her voiced dubbed the way it was in the theatrical cut.

The film is strong both visually and thematically. Yet when it was released, its stylish gothic visuals brought some critics to actually label Dark City as style over substance type of film, which couldn’t be further from the truth. If anything this movie is all about substance. Society is being analyzed by those in power, who constantly shift things around. Those scenes in which the whole city landscape twists and contorts are representative of the constant urban renewals. In the film, society sleeps while those in power, hiding behind shadows and darkness manipulate everything, if that isn’t representative of the world we live in, I don’t know what is. The main character, John Murdoch speaks volumes about those of us who are awake, those of us who aren’t sheep, we know something isn’t right. The main character is confused, because life is a mystery, but he moves on, searching for that ultimate truth. I love the fact that he gets things done because he develops mental powers, literally making things happen by using his brains. What Alex Proyas is speaking about here is not conforming, not being a follower but rather, that we should take control of our lives, literally changing our surroundings until we find ultimate happiness. But there’s always that constant search for the truth inspite of all the distractions and the muddled facts.

Dark City is not without influences. It reminded me of Metropolis(1927) (something that Roger Ebert, a staunch defender of Dark City also agrees with) because the city is a like a main character. Same as Fritz Lang’s amazing futuristic vistas in Metropolis, a lot was put into making Dark City’s titular city a wonder to behold. Alex Proyas mixed old school filmmaking techniques with some new ones by using miniatures, paintings and computer generated images to bring this mysterious Dark City to life. The art direction is outstanding, Proya’s use of lights and shadows and the wardrobe makes everything look retro with lots of film noir going for it. Thematically speaking they have similarities as well because both films deal with class issues, albeit in different ways; for example in Metropolis society is presented with the idea that the rich and powerful and the working class should work together for the benefit of all, a sort of idealistic take on the matter, while Dark City takes a diametrically opposed stance, it wants to wake up the sleeper, the worker bee. It proposes the idea of waking up the sleeping masses so that they can become masters of their own destiny, cutting through all the bull crap that was inserted in their mind from inception. So as you can see, the film is not a flimsy one, it has lots to say. Top all that with a great cast, including Rufus Sewell, Jennifer Connelly, Kiefer Sutherland and William Hurt and astonishing gothic art direction and you’ve got yourselves a winner of a movie meant to be enjoyed for generations to come.

Rating: 5 out of 5