Russell Crowe steers this ship, giving a commanding, two-fisted turn as
Noah, the last in the heroic line of Seth and the natural enemies of the
descendants of Cain, who slew his brother Abel ten generations prior. The first
murder, Adam and Eve's taste of the forbidden fruit, rape, and all sinful human
desire have led "the Creator" to decide the Earth must be cleansed.“Fire consumes all, water cleanses.”
Noah has been waiting for a sign from the Creator, and he gets in the form
of powerful visions of the world washed away in a great flood. With the help of
his grandfather, the long-lived Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins), he deciphers
these visions as meaning he must build a giant ark, not so he can save humanity
from a watery grave, but to rescue the innocent animals so the world can begin
anew. So yes, most of the elements we know remain intact, but Aronofsky spruces
it up to Lord of the Rings levels of grandiose fantasy. Noah is aided in his
building of the ark by the Nephilim, fallen angels transformed into gangly
stone giants who start as enemies but become fierce protectors. And who are
they protecting him from, exactly? What kind of villain could one come up with
for a fairly narrow story such as this? Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone) is the
snarling embodiment of everything wrong with humanity; through gritted teeth
(sometimes filled with chewed-upon humans and lizards) he leads his ravaged,
depraved clan against Noah in an attempt to board the ark and save themselves.
While Noah is ruled by "Heaven's will", his family is bound by
more earthly desires. His wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly) has stayed true to
her husband but has begun to worry about this most recent task; Noah's son Shem
(Douglas Booth) wishes for a child with the barren Ila (Emma Watson), while the
other son Ham (Logan Lerman) is desperate to find a girl before they all wind
up at the bottom of the sea. Good luck with a name like Ham! The internal
family dramas are obviously an embellishment to give a much-needed human touch
as there are few other surprises to be found until that first drop of holy rain
splashes Noah's face. When so much of the story hinges on fate and divine
intervention, there simply isn't much room for drama. 
Aronofsky has some serious guts to take the film in the direction it
ultimately leads, as Noah's unshakeable faith begins to border on psychosis,
putting his entire family at risk. Exploring the line between religious
zealotry and paranoid schizophrenia, it's safe to say this is going to elbow a
few purists right in the ribs. But it's also where Aronofsky seems most
comfortable as extreme obsession has been a constant theme since early his
earliest work. Stuck at sea in the claustrophobic Ark, with a hidden stowaway
lurking in the lower bowels, Noah's family find themselves in the midst of a
psychotic thriller with their patriarch as the looney bin's top patient. While
it does go a little overboard and into camp territory at points, what's most
fascinating is how little Aronofsky and co-writer Ari Handel need to do in
bringing about this tonal shift. It's a natural progression of Noah's
fanaticism taken to a disturbing level.
It should come as no surprise that Aronofsky presents some gloriously moving
images in which to tell this story, sending us to deep space at one point to
detail the universe's creation. Ironically, the first thoughts that may come to
mind during these scenes are of the science-based series, Cosmos, which
creationists are currently rending garments over. But Aronofsky's film sits
quite naturally in a space that believers and non-believers can appreciate,
allowing room for a bit of evolution to the divine origin. The fast-forwarded
style of Requiem for a Dream escorts
us through the blackness of space to the birth of all life and its modern
destruction at the hands of men. It's an exhilarating sequence, one only
matched by the ferocity of the flood as it strikes and engulfs the world.
Aronofsky has never had a canvas this big to paint on and what he does with it is
miraculous.It's unlikely that Noah will fully satisfy secular or deeply religious audiences, but it shouldn't drive them away, either. While presenting the spiritual tale from a modern sensibility often makes for a clunky combination, Aronfosky's daring approach and visual deftness stop this ship from running aground.
