The Crime of Noah
Spoilers ahead! Please read anyway so you don't think you actually need to see this piece of crap.
Let's see, where can I start to dissect this piece of dung. Okay, let's start with the point that he is telling a Bible story. Yeah, so, under pressure Paramount decided to label the film "inspired" by the Bible story rather than being one, which ends up being accurate because Aronofsky not only took the artistic license to fill in the blanks (otherwise the movie would have been less than an hour - oh, that would have been a blessing) but he just plain out changed the story for reasons that really made no sense except he liked adding a really sick twist to the whole thing.
But, before I get into that, I just want to say this: what is wrong with telling a rich, faithful story? If you are going to tell a Biblical story, follow the Biblical story! And do so with great passion. You don't have to be a Christian or a Jew to appreciate a great story from that particular religious persuasion and even if you are a believer, you don't have to believe every detail (okay, you do if you are a die hard but that is a whole other issue) to appreciate the story and the sentiment. I just finished watching the Ramayana, the Indian epic that was over 80 episodes on YouTube (the Indian epic, The Mahabharata, is even longer) and I don't have to believe every supernatural event to enjoy immensely the grand story and all the wisdom contained within. I am not a Christian, per se (okay, I am Hindu) and I have always found the story of Noah to be a bit peculiar and hard to understand, but I certainly can appreciate the faith of the man, to be in awe of his dedication to his God, that in the face of what had to be intense disbelief in his project and his sanity from both his family and any other human in the vicinity, he soldiered on for years, building his colossal boat.
Which brings me to my second point: what a massive amount of material for Aronofsky to work with but he didn't touch on any of that! Noah's family simply complied without question and he was so far from civilization that no one else questioned him. We really saw none of the despair Noah must have suffered through all those years leading up to the flood and really none of the despair while aboard the ark, nor none of the despair after he left the ark to start mankind over again (there were a few vague references to said despair but Aronofsky didn't waste time dealing with it). He was busy turning Noah into a psychopathic homicidal maniac who no longer follows God's (oh, excuse me, the "Creator's" will - we mustn't use the word "God" in this film because they didn't call him that back then....).
So, what drove Noah to want to kill off his granddaughters? Let me take you back through Aronfsky's convoluted illogical mess of a rewrite of the Biblical tale.
In the Bible, Noah enters into the ark with his wife and his three sons and their wives. In other words, four couples to keep renewing the earth and at least not require total incest to get things going again. But, Aronofsky decides to only let one older teenage son (the others appear to be young teenage and child) have a lady friend (Aronfsky's adopted daughter, so, maybe no biological incest, but incest just the same in my opinion - and any parent of an adopted child will tell you the thought of that child mating with one's biological child is gross). Actually, she is just his sister/girlfriend because they aren't actually married. And, Dad, sort of doesn't really think about them as having offspring because the girl is supposed to be barren. But, due to fairy magic, just when they are running toward the ark as the rain starts falling, the girl gets major horny and practically rapes bro in the woods.
The other teenage brother tries to bring a girl back to the ark - Ham, the bad boy - but Dad interferes during a human stampede and leaves the girl to get trampled on. Ham is mighty pissed because he figures he isn't going to get laid for eternity. Younger bro hasn't figured out yet he is going to be eunuch. I am not sure why adopted daughter can't screw them all, but I digress.
Anyhoo, somewhere about the time the doors close, Noah has some kind of mental meltdown and determines that humankind sucks so much, he will not allow his family to repopulate the earth. He is pretty sure all is good in that vain (I guess he can give up sex with wifey) but then he finds out his daughter is miraculously pregnant. Of course, he doesn't seem to think this is a sign from God, um...The Creator....so, he tells his family that if the young woman has a boy, she can keep it, but if it is a girl, he will kill it. Everyone is shocked and for nine months they all worry about the sex of the baby. Now, let's not deal with logic here. If the girl got pregnant once, she can do it again, so instead of killing off all the babies, why not just knock off that girl? (And your still fertile wife while you are at it). But, no, we await the big day. The girl has two babies...two girl babies...so here comes Grandpa with a knife! And she stands there, waiting for him to stab the babies....where the hell is her brother/husband? Where are the other two boys? Where is her Mom? Oh, yeah, doing nothing. But, not to worry! At the last minute, Dad - again going his own way and not what he thinks is the Creator's (hah, got that right this time)...can't kill the girls because love overwhelmed his heart (eyeroll time).
And so the ark comes to dry land and the family disembarks. Now, instead of Noah's sons having sex with their wives, they stand around plotting how to screw sis-in-law or how many years they have to wait to do their nieces. Oh, wait, Ham saw his father naked and went wandering off to die in the wilderness alone, so only the youngest will get to bang the two babies (hopefully, when they at least can stand and speak).
There you have it. I didn't even get into the gigantic rock-angels who help build the ark and fight off the bad men and then returned to heaven having redeemed themselves. The worst of this whole movie is there wasn't a bit of spiritual wisdom shared. The television series, The Ramayana and The Mahabharata, both had very little action (and really cheesy war scenes with very early attempts at special effects) but, both series were fabulous because of the great scripts, incredible acting, the moral dilemmas, and the profound wisdom shared in each and every episode. Noah had nothing....absolutely nothing redeeming in the script (what script?), the characters, or the supposed spiritual message. The film was simply devoid of anything worthwhile...it wasn't a Bible story, it wasn't a sci-fi story, it wasn't a parable, it wasn't a story about ethics or morals, it just wasn't anything but a big, huge, soulless turd from Hollywood and I hope Aronofsky offers all moviegoers an apology for making that disaster...we deserve it.
Criminal Profiler Pat Brown
April 2, 2014
