NOAH: an honest review from a hopeful spectator

I had the chance to screen the movie Noah this weekend, and I must say it was not at all what I was expecting. Being able to travel to visit the ark on set during production last year was incredible. The sheer magnitude in size and great attention to detail made me feel like I truly was there. Since that experience, I have been nothing but excited about the movie and how it would benefit mainstream media by bringing a message from the bible.

Perhaps my expectations were a bit high, and also more influenced by previous bible film experiences. And I know, after interviewing Darren Aranofsky, that he was trying to break the mold of traditional bible films. Let me tell you, he did and then some. Right from the beginning of the movie he introduces a mythology I am entirely unfamiliar with. Perhaps it is my sheltered, flannel-board sunday school mentality, but it begins much darker than I thought. The bible really puts an emphasis on how the world was wicked and God was displeased. But it doesn't say in what way it was wicked. And I must say, this writing changes the way I perceive wicked to be. But it's true, the world had to have been so incredibly, unbelievably wicked for God to want to wipe it clean like that. I'm sure I don't want to even imagine what it was like.

But in this world of dark and different, Aranofsky brings an almost Tolkien feel to it with mythical creatures I've only ever heard whispers of. He brings them to the forefront of the story in such an interesting way that while I am pretty confident that this is not how it happened, it still intrigued me. And I'm pretty sure that the whole point of writing this story the way that it was had more to do with making the world turn their idea of what really happened to Noah on it's head.

By the third act, things take such a dramatic turn that the story is almost unrecognizable. I found myself wanting to audibly ask "Why did you do that?" Fortunately for me, I had the opportunity to ask that the very next night as I sat down at a roundtable with both writers of the film: Ari Handel and Darren Aranofsky.

They spent half an hour taking apart each section of the film and explaining why they made the choices they made. Each time they explained, I found their case to be compelling and oddly....believable. At the end of the interview I found myself almost rooting for the film, having unearthed it's secrets and understood the direction it went in. Unfortunately, not everyone has the luxury of hearing directly from the writers why they made the story decisions that they did, and consequently, I fear that the movie will suffer with religious viewers especially because it is so very different from what we have made up bible movies to be in our collective heads.

My hope is that viewers will enter the theater with open minds and check their expectations at the door.