[Spoilers ahead, but c’mon, it’s Noah’s Ark]
Much like the various soaring, crawling and slithering inhabitants of Noah’s ark, the films of Darren Aronofsky seem to come in pairs. Whilst there are significant differences between each of his films tonally, formally and in the matter of subject, the Aronofsky oeuvre has been constituted to date by three loose sets of companion pieces.
His first two features - one, a surrealist thriller about a paranoid mathematician, and the other, a wrenching, hyper-kinetic ensemble drama of drug addicts – were both claustrophobic, intimate indies about the self-destructive nature of human obsession or addiction (to a certain extent, that’s the underlying crux to all of his films, but I digress). His fourth and fifth films – one, the decline of a former wrestling talent told in the vein of gritty social realism, and the other, a Polanskian psychological horror about a ballerina’s descent into madness – came as a surprisingly cohesive duology on physicality and performance; or the inherent limitations of the human body and psyche.
The Ark itself – a towering feat of robust, meticulous set-design built to actual biblical specifications – is to witness an awe-striking grandeur the likes of which we’ve scarcely seen from the filmmake
With his latest picture, the biblical blockbuster Noah, we receive the counterpart to Aronofsky’s much-maligned (and frankly misunderstood) science-fiction flop The Fountain (2006); another grand, ambitious existential epic about spirituality and death, and man’s inability to satisfyingly comprehend either. The notable time-gap between the pair will fall on the dismal critical and commercial returns of the former; given that the apocalyptic Genesis favorite has been a dream project for Aronofsky since childhood, one can imagine it would likely be the next to be green-lit had The Fountain actually made back its hefty $35m budget (sadly, it only recouped $15m).
But thanks to impressive returns on subsequent pictures, Aronofsky netted his most sizable budget to date for his towering passion project Noah – $160m, a far cry from the modest $6m afforded to the production of The Wrestler (2008) – and it’s fully evident in the size and scope of the picture at hand. This is a consummate work of craft and grand-scale creation from a master filmmaker; as confident in stuffing frames with chaotic CGI spectacle as it is in wielding them to palpable atmosphere from sparse, primordial Icelandic landscapes. To see the Ark itself – a towering feat of robust, meticulous set-design built to actual biblical specifications – is to witness an awe-striking grandeur the likes of which we’ve scarcely seen from the filmmaker, even including the often-staggering compositions offered in The Fountain.
But in spite of the way commercial incentives of big-budget Hollywood productions can often mute creative visions, this is still very much a Darren Aronofsky picture; boldly ambitious, dizzyingly inventive, singularly strange. His formal flourishes are everywhere; the film’s most striking centerpiece is not the Great Flood or the preceding climactic battle, but a hyper-kinetic, cross-stitched montage of the Creation Story, rendered in a flurry of dazzling fluidity and mesmerizing imagery, almost like Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life on crack. The dark psychological interiority characterizing most of Aronofsky’s pictures is ever-present too; both in the nightmarishly rendered visions of apocalypse in the first half of the picture, and the menacing undercurrent of obsession charging the second, lending the film a frightening intimacy most other filmmakers might leave absent. It’s at once both traditional and defiantly unconventional.
Aronofsky is no stranger to controversy – from the apparently anti-Iranian subtext of The Wrestlerto that infamous ass-to-ass climax in Requiem for a Dream (2000) – and it seems unlikely his creative liberties will dodge outrage here. After all, it’s The Holy Bible he’s toying with. But oddly enough, it’s precisely these purposed deviations from the source material that make Noah such a thoughtful, dynamic appropriation. I can take or leave the grumpy, computer-generated Geodudes, or even Ray Winstone’s scowling, evil king; employed more often to dispense contrasting ideologies on the [in]significance of man rather than to actually provide any real threat to Noah’s task. What really struck me was the aforementioned descent into fanatical obsession in Aronofsky’s final act, if only because his willful misinterpretation of the text seemed intended to underline the perils of doing just that.
After a pivotal vision of mankind’s annihilation, Noah becomes convinced that his family have been chosen by their Creator, not to weather the flood and rebuild the human race from scratch, but to assist the animal kingdom in its survival and then passively allow their family-line to peter off into extinction. His family - mortified by Noah’s interpretation - quickly begin to produce their own readings (usually to best serve their own needs and desires), and it’s here, in the contentious squabbles of ambiguity rather than in the noble victory of Noah’s conviction, that we witness the clearest reflection of religion, faith and spirituality.
It’s certainly an unwieldy effort for Hollywood to shoulder, which is why all the promotional material to date has seemed almost consciously generic, but it’s hard to imagine a more provoking, thoughtful and meaty blockbuster released this year
Whether by a vivid, ordained prophecy or by the pages of an ancient, litiginous text, navigating the spiritual is an endeavor fraught with dubious gray areas. In Aronofsky’s vision, Noah inevitably learns the best a man can do is to seek the good in all people and circumstances, regardless of the inherent sinful undersides we are all prone to; he maps his spiritual journey and decisions accordingly. Apparent only to the audience, the subsequent history of the Earth following this revelation is stained with the ceaseless, cyclical pattern of humans doing the exact opposite (in that kinetic montage mentioned above, we see Cain’s bludgeoning blow to Abel’s skull fracture into various incarnations of warriors, soldiers and killers from multiple timeframes), but it’s nevertheless an idea that resonates truthfully throughout all the endless human disorientation, spurring on our suffering – though I’m sure many will see it as a weird, ultimately superfluous episode where the protagonist goes a bit mad for a while and almost stabs a baby.
Like The Fountain, Noah is about hubris; our flailing attempts to comprehend the greater fabric outside of our limited capacity for understanding. Also like The Fountain, it will likely prove divisive. It’s certainly an unwieldy effort for Hollywood to shoulder, which is why all the promotional material to date has seemed almost consciously generic, but it’s hard to imagine a more provoking, thoughtful and meaty blockbuster released this year (game on, Christopher Nolan), as well as one meeting the requirements for the exciting visual spectacle a multiplex crowd demands too. Faith in whatever is to come is virtually unwavering at this point.
This content is brought to you with funding assistance from New Zealand On Air.
