DRAMA; 2hr 18min
STARRING: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Anthony Hopkins
Thy will be done: Crowe
Noah (Crowe) is a husband (to Connelly’s steadfast Naameh), father and visionary commanded by God in director Darren Aronofsky’s vivid, controversial chunk of biblical history. In this magical, portentous realm, fallen angels lumber like colossal tumbles of rocks, mankind is the brutish instrument of its own wholesale destruction and the monumental Ark that Noah is ordered to construct will be the sole protection for the innocent when the Creator unleashes watery hell to obliterate the earth. The birds and beasts sense it, too, streaming in daunting hordes into the vast hold of the great wooden ship (built for the film to boxy Bible specs), which they will share with Noah and his conflicted family. Meanwhile, outside, frantic masses are gathering.
Aronofsky (Black Swan) has never shied away from darkness: true to form, Noah is an ominous, momentous, barbaric and epically poetic reflection on the tyranny of faith. Crowe anchors the suffering with the depthless solemnity of a leader who literally bears the world’s weight. His Noah is a good man tormented by what he believes he has been asked to do. Whatever your beliefs, it’s a spellbinding story.
