Noah

Started by MacGuffin, November 04, 2006, 01:13:15 AM

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jenkins

Quote from: Alexandro on April 05, 2014, 12:50:02 PM
I'm a little surprised no one is talking about this film here. I haven't seen it, and I was kind of hoping to read some opinions here before deciding if it's worth the trip. I suppose most of you are inclined, like me, to see this some other time.

it's got a fantasy size so i think it's a solid big screen pick. i'd be more the raid 2 excited, but either way. "i can totally brutalize you" vs "killing terrible people aka everyone but my family" either way

Alexandro

yes, I can see that but is it interesting beyond that? is DA going full crazy with it? is this more an artistic vision than a rehash of the fantasy genre? does it dive in the moral dilemmas in an interesting way? how is russell crowe's performance? How does it fit in Arofnosky's body of work? I mean it just seems as if no one gives a shit about this film here, which is weird considering is Arofnosky.

jenkins

like and appreciate your range of curiosity

Quote from: Alexandro on April 05, 2014, 01:51:31 PM
but is it interesting beyond [fantasy]?
i think fantasy people might say if it's not interesting beyond fantasy than fuck it (?). this goes into the good, e.g. beyond snow white and the huntsman

the global endurance of the noah story asks humans why they gotta harsh the holy mellow. a problem relatable for everyone

Quoteis DA going full crazy with it?
he can't fully because he has biblical promises, but it's a human story, for some reason there are stone warriors, and da goes mad when can

Quoteis this more an artistic vision than a rehash of the fantasy genre?
noah has an artistic center, but i just can't not be pissed about the stone warriors. stone warriors battle people to death, and that's gotta be the textbook definition of fantasy bullshit

Quotedoes it dive in the moral dilemmas in an interesting way?
yeah because his family isn't perfect, which is a real "oh fuck" for the situation

Quotehow is russell crowe's performance?
solid

QuoteHow does it fit in Arofnosky's body of work?
right there in the terrible human problems make things terrible category

Alexandro


matt35mm

I liked it pretty good. One thing that I liked was that everybody believes in God and also pretty much believes that God talked to Noah, so nobody thinks that he's crazy for building an ark. I would have thought that that'd be the approach, but it also would have been typical. The movie chooses to find its drama in less typical ways, like how far a family who is willing to go very far and has no doubts about Noah's connection to God is actually willing to go before they draw their own line.

Not everything works, but I appreciated how strange it was. Crowe is good. There were parts of this Noah story that I had no idea about... some dramatically fucked up stuff that worked for me because I didn't know how that all was gonna end, and this movie didn't seem afraid to make Noah not a nice guy. I knew that a lot of Bible stories didn't have happy endings, so in a way, it was kind of the most unsure-about-what-was-going-to-happen I've been in a long time for a big-budget movie.

For whatever it's worth, I feel like it was done with a lot of integrity to Aronofsky's original intent. I don't get the sense that he beckoned to the studio's pressure to make it a little more audience friendly. Everything seems to be his idea, even the dumb stuff, but isn't that just Aronofsky for ya. He skirts between the dumb/bombastic/flashy and the brilliant/visceral/metaphorically-rich. That's just our boy's way. By the way, he seems to be over scarves these days.

Sleepless

Decent interview with DA on Friday's Empire podcast.
He held on. The dolphin and all the rest of its pod turned and swam out to sea, and still he held on. This is it, he thought. Then he remembered that they were air-breathers too. It was going to be all right.

picolas

[lbox'd]

a lot of noah is really awesome, and just what you'd expect from a $120 million aronofsky movie. it's filled with awe-inspiring visual sequences, one of which actually moved me to tears mainly out of the sheer detail and artistry surging through it.

there's really only one joke in the whole movie (involving snakes), but it's so refreshing. i think it speaks to the fact that noah operates on a single frequency: the big, bold, loud epic. it totally gets away with that for about an hour, but at some point there needs to be intimacy, or a pause of some kind, otherwise the constant epicness becomes numbing, even a little alienating. (which it did.) crowe and connelly's performances suffer from the same issue... crowe's great at giving noah a quiet warrior vibe, but in the end he comes off a bit flat and weird because we need to see more sides of this guy to really love him and appreciate his plight. i wanted connelly to question his initial plans even a LITTLE BIT, rather than simply being his follower. i wanted her to be less weepy in general. for connelly in particular, crying is sort of an easy tactic. noah is such a badass, and he needed an equally badass wife.

i love how weathered everyone's face is. crowe especially has so many nooks and crannies. i want more movies with wrinkly, dirty faces. they're so much more interesting than clean ones.

noah comes off as more of a moving storybook than a 'traditional movie' in that there is little to no subtlety (ever), and lots of ideas/scenes that only really work if you don't question their internal logic at ALL. i'm okay with that because if you accept it for what it is, and ignore some of the weak writing, there's a lot of great metaphors to be found and questions to contemplate about the nature of man and belief.

Jeremy Blackman

This seemed like a good time to finally see Noah. So here's a brief review. The artistry is truly dazzling at times and the concept is great, and I appreciate all of that despite its shortcomings. Emma Watson had a very intense, soulful performance...

But the movie just did not fully come together. The dialogue is shockingly prosaic. Camera movements and framing, especially during battles, suddenly become dull and unimaginative. And this is one of the worst film scores I've ever heard.

I do like how they just put all the bonkers magical stuff on screen. That makes the scenes where God does not answer work all the better.

I kept seeing very startling parallels to Battlestar Galactica. So that was interesting. Also, Lost's "Across The Sea" seems to take from this story — the corrupt men on the island who built the village and the wells and the donkey wheel clearly resemble the descendants of Cain.