Directed by:
Darren AronofskyCinematography:
Matthew LibatiqueComposer:
Clint MansellCast:
Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Douglas Booth, Nick Nolte, Mark Margolis, Kevin Durand (more)VOD (3)
Plots(1)
Russell Crowe stars in a spectacular reimagining of the apocalyptic story of the great flood. When Noah (Russell Crowe) experiences visions of a catastrophic deluge, he seeks advice from his grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins). Methuselah reveals that the disaster foretold is God's punishment for man's corruption of the world. It is Noah's destiny to construct a vessel to save the lives of the innocent. Together with his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), their sons Shem (Douglas Booth) and Ham (Logan Lerman), and family friend Ila (Emma Watson), he sets about building a giant wooden ark. But the terrible impending flood is not the only challenge Noah faces. A violent tribe of warriors led by his nemesis Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone) want the ark for themselves! (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (14)
A boring and tedious biblical fantasy with shockingly bad CGI giants and an unexpectedly short flood that ends before one can look around. Fortunately, at least the likeable cast was good. Russell Crowe was great and Hermione also gave a very decent performance, but otherwise the film did not please me with anything. Darren Aronofsky should stick to dramas without visual effects. 50%.
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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.
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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.
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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%]
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I liked the comic book (by the same authors as the script) better mainly because the world in which the story takes place is much more interesting - it's actually a classic post-apocalyptic landscape with remnants of various cities, factories, machine wrecks and so on. The film was left with only hints, not even Tower of Babel made it into the film, and I wonder what led Aronofsky and Handel to deviate so far from their own original work in the adaptation. Otherwise, though, Noah isn't downright bad, although for me Darren Aronofsky remains the director of a single outstanding film (yes, The Fountain). Russell Crowe's fanatical position was very convenient.
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