Film Review: 'Noah'

So, I've been away on a wee Easter break to my Gran's and to Dunblane over the last few days which has been nice. Got sooooo much studying to do now but thought I'd get in a couple of posts before I have zero time!

For Christmas, my sister and I got vouchers to spend at the Odeon cinema. As we don't have one in
Aberdeen, we took the chance on Monday of being near Braehead shopping centre (Glasgow) to  spend them! We decided to see 'Noah', as I had heard of it and thought it looked good, particularly due to the cast, which included Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connolly and Emma Watson, who is one of my all-time favourite actresses.

Co-written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, the film was based upon the bible story of Noah's Arc, a tale which, being brought up as a church-goer, I have heard many times. Although the skeleton of the plot followed the bible theme, there were differing elements too!

One example of this was the idea of the creature named 'watchers'. They were huge rock monsters who helped add additional violence to the violent scenes, which were more frequent than expected but didn't make the film difficult to watch.

I thought that all performances were excellent and I was particularly taken with the acting of Logan Lerman who played Noah's younger son, Ham. However, I did find the character's bizarre mix of accents a bit odd, with some (such as Watson) with a distinctly English accent and other sounding more Scottish.

There were key themes in the film which I thought were well conveyed. The one that was extremely hard-hitting and made up the largest proportion of tension in the storyline was regarding Noah being torn between his orders from 'the Creator' (never once referred to as 'God' in this film, I noticed, which I found very interesting and presume was deliberate in order to fit into the time period better) and his loyalty to his family. The Creator plans to wipe out the planet to get rid of human evil and start a fresh with the animals collected on the arc, but wiping out human evil should surely include the ending of Noah's family too? Can Noah condemn his children, his grandchildren to death? How far will he hold true to his faith and what will be the consequences of his decision?

Overall, I'd describe 'Noah' as epic. Everything is larger than life, including all the amazing effects used and the CGI. It's a hard hitting, thought provoking film, so don't go if your looking for a comedy! But otherwise I thoroughly recommend you watch it. As I've warned above, it doesn't stick 100% to the bible version of events, but I would argue that this allows for a fresh spin on a well-known story that results in a deeper understanding of and altered perspective on its message.