film
by Keiron Self
NOAH ***
DIVERGENT ***
Dir: Darren Aronofsky (12A, 120 mins)
The animals went in two by two hurrah, hurrah! The Old Testament story of
Noah and his menagerie surviving an apocalyptic flood gets an unlikely retelling
from the writer/director of Requiem For A Dream, The Wrestler and Black
Swan, Darren Aronofsky. This ecologically skewed disaster flick has Russell Crowe
as the world’s biggest animal wrangler trying to keep sane when plagued by voices
from the ‘Creator’. He has been chosen to save all that crawls, slither, trots and his
family from death by water, brought about as Anthony Hopkins’ Methusulah states
by the wickedness of man. Naturally people think him a crackpot as he builds his
very functional unshowy ark, then the rainy wrath of the heavens is upon them, and
baddie Tubal Cain (played by a non-Cockernee Ray Winstone) wants in. Epic in
scope, creating a medieval Biblical Middle Earth rather than sandals and togas,
Aronofsky’s version of a beloved Sunday School story has real ambition. Within all
this is a family drama too as Noah struggles to accept Ila, (Emma Watson) into his
family when she strikes up with one of his sons. Gritty, apocalyptic and sombre,
Noah should hopefully provide spectacle and intelligence rather than soggy
silliness