In which I partially recap Darren Aronofsky’s film Noah, decry the lack of epic biblical beards, speculate on the origin of rock monsters and make inappropriate references to Ham.
The following contains spoilers! Movie spoilers that is… If you’re still concerned about biblical spoilers then you should probably treasure your ignorance on the subject.
Most people already know the story of Noah; righteous in his time and selected by God to save the world’s animals by building an ark while the world was cleansed of sin in a great flood. The story itself is relatively short, only covering three chapters of the Book of Genesis.
For the purposes of the film, I reckon the director Darren Aronofsky was keeping the “plausible deniability” card up his sleeve by making the setting of the film rather ambiguous. In the films press release it is stated:
“The film is inspired by the story of Noah. While artistic license has been taken, we believe that this film is true to the essence, values and integrity of a story that is a cornerstone of faith for millions of people worldwide. The biblical story of Noah can be found in the book of Genesis.”
Russell Crowe, Fightin’ Around The World!
The ambiguity comes from the fact that this film’s setting could be an alien world, or some sort of post-apocalyptic future (does that make the events after the flood post-post-apocalyptic?). The way this is done is two-fold. One is the animals which inhabit this world, which look familiar, but are subtly different, dogs with armoured scales, elephants without ears etc. You can look at an animal and say “that’s a deer”, or “that’s a snake” but be unable to pick what type it is. There is also references to historical wars in a “brother against brother” montage in one part of the film.
Russell Crowe plays Noah, sporting an underwhelming beard, nowhere near the epic biblical proportions I’d expect from this Old Testament Patriarch. While out gathering moss with this sons (the film contains a couple of pro-vegetarian references), he has a vision from the “Creator”, followed by a more elaborate dream that evening.
Troubled by visions from God? Consult with your local holy-man. If problems persist, please see your Podiatrist.
These visions prompt him to consult with this grandfather Methuselah, played by Anthony Hopkins, who completely lacks any sort of beard, contrary to popular depictions in the past, which I can only assume is to avoid comparisons to Odin.
The journey to find Methuselah takes Noah and his family across vast stretches of barren terrain. In fact, the land this movie is set in appears to be all barren terrain, which makes one wonder whether the all encompassing flood hasn’t already happened any everyone just forgot about it. During this journey they pick up a girl named Ila, later played by Hermione Granger Emma Watson, and encounter giant rock monsters, one of which (voiced by Nick Nolte, who apparently sobered up long enough to record his lines) helps them on their quest.
They chose the disembodied head of George Murdock with laser eyes over this?
Now I may be an Agnostic, but I have a pretty rough knowledge of the Book of Genesis, and I don’t recall giant rock monsters being mentioned. I can only assume the makers of the film got slightly confused by the religious aspects in Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier, and decided to include the rock monsters which got cut from that film due to budget constraints. Now that film featured an epic biblical beard. They should have taken more notes.
It is explained in the film that these rock monsters are in fact fallen angels. Not the Lucifer style fallen angels however, these ones apparently took pity on man after Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise, and decided to come to earth to watch over him and his descendants. Unfortunately due to either a miscalculation about their own fiery composition, or one of the ineffable Creator’s curses, they crashed down to earth and melted the rock, which caked to them, giving them their rocky appearance. How rock manages to stick to beings composed of light I’m not entirely sure. This appears to be an alternatively physics’d universe, or perhaps I should have taken the hint from my “beings composed of light” description and stopped giving it too much rational thought.
Noah and his eldest son Shem eventually find the beardless, cave-dwelling Methuselah, who proceeds to get Noah high on some sort of tea so that he can have another vision. This vision predicts the coming flood and bestows the blueprints for building the Ark. Methuselah, a regular purveyor of exotic herbage, also gives Noah a seed from the Garden of Eden, which will prove useful in a moment.
At this point, I was wondering how Noah intended on building an Ark when he and his family are currently camped on what appears to be lava plain. Thankfully Noah has a Deus Ex Machina handy (or in this case possibly a Deus Ex Plantatae), in the form of Methuselah’s seed, which Noah plants and from which bursts forth… a water fountain(??)
Clearly this is a time of miracles, as from the fountain, five rivers flow out (Oh I see what you did thur!) and along the banks of these rivers a forest springs to life, creating plenty of potential lumber for building arks. Upon seeing this miracle, the other rock monsters – who were apparently sceptical up to this point – decide to aid Noah in his mission, conveniently explaining the biblical plot-hole of how a man, his wife, three children and an infant are supposed to build an ark 300 cubits by 50 by 30 (or about half the length of the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner), without the assistance of four storey tall golems.
“God himself could not sink this ship!” – Billy Zane
When we next see Noah et al it is obviously several years later (or 120 years according to some interpretations of scripture), since the kids have all grown up, and Noah is looking somewhat greyer of beard than previous. Balder of head too as he has shaved his head, possibly in a failed attempt to add the hair to his beard in order to make up for its lack of epic-ness. It seems Noah’s ecological charity was short lived as a good section of the forest has been decimated to turn it into lumber for the ark, and tar to seal it, leaving behind what appears to be scorched earth. Good one Noah, but I guess it’s going to be all wiped out soon enough.
It’s at this point the main antagonist appears in the form of Tubal-cain (played by Beowulf Ray Winstone, channelling Mickey Rourke). His beard is on its way towards epic, but could use a bit of filling out. It’s also a forked beard, so that you can more easily identify him has the Bad Guy. Tubal-cain begins by making an impression upon Noah’s second son, Ham (eggs, sausage, bacon… is it breakfast time yet?), and confronts Noah about this ark-building activities, claiming that he is the king of these lands, so the forest belongs to him. Once realising that Noah has a dozen or so 30 foot tall monsters on his side, he retreats making various threats. No doubt we’ll see him again later.
Animals begin to arrive, first the birds, then snakes and lizards, then larger animals. The explanation for this is that when an animal drinks from one of these five new rivers, which seemingly have reached all the corners of the planet, they compelled travel towards the site of the Ark. There they cooperatively file into it without succumbing to their usual natural instinct to eat each other. Once on board, they are conveniently subdued by some sort of herbal smoke which puts them all to sleep. Presumably this does not also give them a case of the munchies.
Now that’s what I call a moveable feast! Fire up the barbecue Ham!
Around this time Noah decides to visit one of the nearby settlements, apparently to see if he can find a couple of likely wives for his two younger sons, Ham and Japheth. Upon witnessing the chaos and depravities of mankind in these settlements (including more scenes of pro-vegetarian propaganda) he comes to the conclusion that humanity is royally screwed up, and deserves to be drowned. When he returns to his family empty-handed, Ham – who is envious of his brother Shem’s relationship with Ila (no one likes green Ham, least of all Sam I am) – runs off to find his own wife. He succeeds in finding a likely candidate after falling into a mass grave, which is certainly an unorthodox method of finding a partner. Noah’s wife, Naameh (played by Russell Crowe’s wife from “A Beautiful Mind”), visits Methuselah who is apparently Odinsleeping in his cave, and beseeches him to intervene and convince Noah to allow his sons to have wives.
Troubled by the absence of Ham (a situation I often find myself), Noah dispatches Shem and Ila to search the forest for him. After some fruitless running about, Ila encounters Methuselah having a senior-moment digging for berries in the ground. He talks to her about giving his blessing, and touches her abdomen, which is scarred from an event earlier in the film which left her unable to conceive children. Apparently the touch of dottering old seniors makes young women extremely horny, because Ila immediately runs to Shem and commences to tear his clothes off with lust. We are spared the sight of frantic biblical knowing between adoptive siblings as we return to Ham and his own recent conquest who decide to make their way back to the Ark.
Shem and Ila return to the Ark with post-coital grins on their faces, having entirely forgotten their search for Ham (too busy makin’ bacon themselves), forcing Noah to go looking for himself. These events coincide with the arrival of the film’s main star, the deluge, which precipitates (hah!) a charge by Tubal-cain and his heavily armed followers on the Ark. Noah locates Ham, who is struggling to free his new girlfriend from a plot device bear trap she got herself caught in. Urging Ham to return to the Ark, Noah then completely abandons Ham’s girlfriend to be apparently trampled by the approaching horde. As if Ham wasn’t already pissed off at him enough.
“My name is Jean Valjean! No, wait… Javert!”
The charging – and by now rather soggy – armies, with Noah in their midst, are greeted by a wall of living stone, in the form of the rock monsters, linked with chains in a circle protecting the Ark. Noah circumvents this cunning defence by simply ducking between the legs of one of the creatures (one wonders why the other attackers didn’t try this) and secures the Ark. Tubal-cain, surrounding by anachronistic armoured soldiers, fires an equally anachronistic mortar into the chest of one of the rock monsters, then with a leap which could only be trampoline assisted, spears the rock monster through the heart, causing it to a) repent to the Creator and b) explode with a bright light and a beam shooting towards the sky. Tubal-cain, who was riding the spear as the creature exploded, was flung towards the Ark and inconvenienced with a broken leg.
Upon seeing that a righteous death in battle guarantees a one-way ticket back to the Creator, the other rock monsters redouble their efforts, swiping, stomping and slashing the armies, while individually exploding at various intervals. The injured Tubal-cain locates a scaffold which may as well be labelled “Ark Side-Entrance” and drags himself up to the top of the Ark, although it does require him to do a bit of axe-work to gain access, probably compromising what little water-tightness the Ark had in the first place. As he frantically hacks away, the last of the rock monsters explodes, ascending to heaven. The remaining, rather moist combatants attempt to storm the Ark’s main entrance, and are dealt to by Noah, rope-swinging about like Tarzan, picking them off in single combat. Luckily Noah is aided by the escalation of the Deluge, in the form of giant fountains of water erupting from the earth.
What jolly boating weather!
On an anticlimactic note, to learn the rest of the tale you’ll need to go see the film yourself, because I’ve run out of creative juice when it comes to writing this lengthy recap. What follows is an unlikely pregnancy, infanticidal tendencies, pyromania, red red wine (goes to my head), the Curse of Ham, a story of the Book of Genesis with an evolutionary twist and Big Gay Rainbows. All this awaits you when you see the film for yourself. Enjoy!
