Noah: A Review

This is the age of hijacking. Generally in hijacking the original intent is overpowered by stealth, technology and the threat of violence, usually by people who know better. This is "Noah," without the intimidation. People from Hollywood have snuck in, taken a very disturbing biblical story, made it over according to their own better way, added technological devices and flown it under the radar into American theaters.

Iconic literature always has layers to exploit. Was Hamlet an Oedipal man? An existential man? Shriveled by religious fear? Is Moby Dick a Manichean nightmare? Just a whale?

With religious literature, however, things get tougher. Some conflicts like the divinity of Christ are inherent and lasting. But others, like the story of Noah, are terrifyingly rigid. The story is horrifying: God has second thoughts about His decision to create man. God has second thoughts. This is a staggering notion and should be stupefying to any thinking person. In the Bible He surveys creation and concludes that man is a murderous failure; man actually kills man--who is made in God's image. God decides that man deserves to be exterminated although Noah, as a just man, should be saved with his family so life on earth can start anew. He gives specific instructions how to build an ark that will save Noah, his family and the animals from the coming flood. Everyone else will die.

God rethinks His position. Homicide is an unforgivable crime. Man has changed for the worse, probably through free will. A just man will be saved. There is a lot here to really worry about. But the creators of "Noah" have risen above all this. Like the religious plane-hijacker, they know a better way.

In "Noah" God is a bit vague. He is "The Creator" and, as in Genesis, He is seriously angry but it seems that He is angry over man's becoming a carnivore. (This vegetarian bias apparently does not extend to other animals who will be saved on the ark.) And Noah has an enemy, the man who killed his father, named Tubal-Cain, a man who has raised homicide to a philosophy. Noah does not go after Tubal-Cain although it has been shown earlier in the movie that Noah can be plenty tough when he killed three carnivorous men. (Apparently homicide is ok if you don't eat your kill.)
Anyway, Noah builds the ark with the help of the Creator and beings called The Watchers (beings from the Book of Daniel that appear in a dream to Nebuchadnezzar usually translated as a vision of God but who also appear in the apocryphal Book of Enoch as angels who fall from their guardian status after lusting after human women.) The Watchers look like marbled Ents, loose from the Peter Jackson set. Then things get harder.

Noah has three sons; they and their wives are in the ark in Genesis. In the movie there is only one wife, Shem's, an injured sterile girl. The other two boys have no women--although Ham surely wants one--and now the clever plot conceived in Hollywood board rooms and e-mails emerges. Noah is a hijacker too. He is going to crash the ark--symbolically, of course. Noah has decided that the Creator wants him and his family to die as well. He prevents poor Ham from getting a girl, is amazed when the barren wife of Shem announces she is pregnant but reassures everyone that his translation of the Creator's plan will be done. He will kill her children. (Apparently killing a child is not homicide.) Eventually he doesn't. Thus it seems that the Creator has deferred the decision of man's survival to Noah himself. Is this a management decision? Are men God's partners? Or does man have his own fate in his hands? Does Tubal-Cain sacrifice his life for man? Or something.
But in the end Noah invents the sport coat.

There is always a dramatic problem when everyone in the audience knows the ending and that problem is met here with intensity. The sets are gloomy, dark and, when possible, murderous. Crowe is a particularly effective brooder. Emma Watson and Jennifer Connelly are good considering the mess they are in. The sons look post-ictal. And Ray Winstone is good in the impossible role as Crowe's human-affirming-through-carnivorism-post modern-positivist antagonist Tubal-Cain.

The movie was ten bucks, the price of a hamburger or a beer. Duck the movie, don't take a date and have both.