Noah (2014) - Darren Aronofsky

Darren Aronofsky's Noah is the classic story of Noah, a descendant of Seth, one of the original three sons, who is chosen by the creator to undertake the most momentous of tasks.  Through visions from god, Noah is shown that mankind has corrupted the creator's vision of the world and must be punished.  Noah is tasked with building a massive arch to rescue the god's other creatures before he drowns the entire world.  Darren Aronofsky's Noah is a solid re-telling of the classic story which features enough interesting thematic ideas to make its narrative shortcomings forgivable.   The strength of the film lies in Aronofsky's exploration of mankind, questioning whether we are internally good or evil at the core of our beings.  Noah is a man who is tasked with destroying humankind and Aronofsky captures the internal struggle of Noah in great, vivid detail.  We see a man who begins to basically go insane from this momentous task which has been bestowed on him, trusting the creators design more so than his human passions and desires.  On the other hand, Ray Winstone's character, Tubal-Cain, the "main bad guy" of the film, believes men are supposed to rule the world the way they see fit, a survival of the fittest of sorts.  Tubal-Cain believes god has forsaken man, leaving them to basically do whatever they please, which creates a nice thematic dichotomy between him and our lead protagonist.  As one would expect from Aronofsky, Noah is stylistically impressive, with beautiful cinematography that reaches a high point during Noah's vision sequences that can be downright haunting.  Thematically Noah is an interesting film, but the film loses focus towards the end, getting far too wrapped up in needing a bad guy (Tubal Cain), and creating conflict between Noah and his son Ham.  Tubal Cain is a fine character but should have never made it onto the Arch, almost feeling like something that was forced on Aronofsky by the studio in an effort to have a clear "bad guy".  Why this is so frustrating is that towards the end of the film, Noah himself begins to lose his own mind in a way that makes him terrifying, with god's will and his own human feelings at ends with each other.   At times, Noah's smaller moments and thematic intentions seem to be at conflict with the blockbuster tendencies of the film, but overall Aronosky manages to put together a film that succeeds more than it fails in examining the nature of man.  

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