NOAH
Cast: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly,
Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Douglas Booth, Nick
Nolte, Frank Langella
Director: Darren Aronofsky
138 minutes
Director: Darren Aronofsky
138 minutes
Previously monickered as an independent-minded filmmaker, Darren Aronofsky’s confirmation as director of this cinematic version of an original story from the book of Genesis, should have set off alarm bells for most God-botherers within Paramount Pictures. Apologies to any Christian readers, but this tale, which to anyone with a working intellect, should only be perceived as an allegory and not ‘gospel’ - if you pardon the pun – is about a man who apparently was still hanging around this comparatively infant planet at the age of 950. So it doesn’t make any kind of sense to take it as factual. However, once word hit the pews that the bold Darren was planning to tackle the material with some artistically creative licence, the fundamentalist brigade revved up their reaction to full-on outrage mode, even before the word ‘action’ was uttered.
Thankfully in this, Noah isn’t referred to as approaching his own personal millennium, but Aronofsky and his co-writer Ari Handel have together taken what is already a story of such far-fetched idiocy into a piece of utter nonsense which should go down in the annals of film pointlessness as a new nadir of unadulterated tosh.
Poor Noah is undergoing hideous nightmares of both floods and bonkers visions of flowers growing in seconds from the ground, and he gets the feeling that one beast of a storm is brewing, which will assuredly out-tsunami anything his fertile imagination can conjure up. So off he trots with his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), and their three children, to gain some input on the pending catastrophe from his grandfather, Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins).
On the way, who should they bump into but The Watchers. These are, apparently, banished angels who have been knocked back by the Creator for being naughty, and disobeying orders. They have subsequently been transformed into stone giants as punishment. (These ludicrous figures appear more like reject mis-shaped black Lego bricks with a torch up their backsides, put together in a workshop by some terminal psychopaths on a bad trip).
In the belief (though it’s news to everyone else) that God has ordered him to save every species of animal, in the meantime annihilating the rest of mankind for being bad, Noah and his clumsy chums The Watchers somehow manage to build a ginormous ark (which is a miracle of achievement in itself as it pops up without a hitch), huge enough to protect them from the imminent, catastrophic flood. While all this is going on, the murderous Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone) and his team of anonymous chums, reckon they should turf out Mr & Mrs Noah and their brood, and take over the running of the ark, as it’s on their manor after all, guv.
"Noah" gets off to a risibly shakey start with some rubbish visual effects showing a slithering snake and forbidden fruit (an apple) both of which look like a screen grab from a 1980s magazine. Aronofsky has shown he can be an excellent director, but this is a monumental duffer, totally bereft of any sense of awe or wonder and sorely implausible on every level. There is multi-nation use of dialect, veering from Australian, through cod-English to American when surely a form of neutral linguistics would have approached something resembling authenticity for the time.
The characters are flat and poorly written, with brothers Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman) and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll) barely exchanging any words at all and who have no detectable bond. Adopted daughter Ila (Emma Watson), was saved by Noah and his Mrs from injury and death when she was a young child - and now that the world is due to be drenched and Ila and Shem are a couple, Noah informs her that she is ‘barren’. With no medical technology available, that is quite a prognosis from Mr Aquaboots, whilst sad Ham comes to the haunting realisation that there will be no one left for him to be with. Meanwhile, Japheth looks on, flummoxed, as indeed is the audience.
Eventually, the apocalypse beckons as the rain begins to fall, and the subsequent flood ravages the globe (or was it still flat at that time, and they’d hoped it might pour off the side?) The animals magically suss out the ark’s location, and show up two by two prior to the monsoon, before being sidelined by a ridiculous plot device notion, in which they're collectively put to sleep, then totally forgotten about. As months pass inside the gigantic wooden structure, family tensions heighten and rows begin from the headbanger tyrant and his dismayed family members.
There is also a ludicrous image where Tubal-cain's men, anxious not to snuff it by drowning, manage to climb on top of one another in an attempt to survive – as they collectively shake, scream and writhe, literally, into a human mountain of agony. Another screwball sequence appears when Methusela has the munchies and goes off in a manic searching for berries - before finally finding one to taste, just seconds before being wiped out by a wave of water.
The film takes a pro-creationist stance and follows the general outline of the Biblical lore of Noah, but Aronofsky has embellished and quite frankly, bollocksed things up to such a degree that he turns the entire film into little more than a farce. The opening text and prologue is so awkwardly handled and ‘Noah’ is encumbered with such wildly uneven effects, which range from fleetingly evocative CGI to primitive work that looks like people having been cut and pasted on to 1970s rear projections. The whole enterprise is a jaw-dropping example of how even visionary cinematic individuals can manage to get virtually everything wrong.
The Double
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska
Director: Richard Ayoade
93 mins
Director: Richard Ayoade
93 mins
Richard Ayoade's second major feature has as its origins a story by Fydor Dostoyevsky, and adds a further mix in the recipe with a sprinkling of George Orwell and a hefty portion of Franz Kafka, being set in a semi-dystopian, retro-future world.
Jesse Eisenberg plays Simon James, who works for an anonymous Big Brother business operated by an entity named “The Colonel" (James Fox) – within a decayingly dull, seedy environment that although at first glance apparently neither services nor produces anything remotely tangible, other than singular photocopies from an archaic machine the size of a large double wardrobe - but runs everything.
It's a hopelessly dour and dire existence for Simon, as he is constantly hectored around by an idiotic supervisor (Wallace Shawn). He is such a faceless item at work, where no one notices nor remembers him, that security relentlessly checks his i.d. every morning. His recreation time reaches fulfillment from the pleasure gained by avidly viewing a bizarre and cheesy TV programme featuring Paddy Considine. That, and the unrequited voyeuristic admiration for his female work colleague (Mia Wasikowska) whom he spies upon from his flat opposite via a large telescope.
Simon is a passive wimp of the first order (no stretch for Eisenberg who is used to such roles) who is suddenly startled by his doppelganger being employed within the same outfit. His lookalike is Simon’s polar opposite, assertive, savvy, cool and a real ladies man. Portraying both Simon and this latter character is a radical departure for Eisenberg, who is forced to play the titular role in an outgoing and sinister manner.
Refreshingly, Ayoade has chosen to be less reliant on special effects in differentiating the characters and instead chooses to go for emphasis from the performance/s, so that with the wildly different ways Eisenberg inhabits the characters, it's always clear exactly which double you're watching.
Eisenberg's “good” protagonist always feels more robotic and less “human” than his double, who shirks responsibility, but at least seems more rounded and a great deal more passionate. Other than the bad double, the only other person in the film who appears to be recognisably human is Wasikowska as Eisenberg's dream girl. She exudes a delightful warmth which is startlingly at odds with this cold, impersonal world, but she too acts in such a schizophrenic way in certain scenes, it almost seems like she too has a double.
The film is essentially a comedy, although most of the humour emerges from the banality of Eisenberg's world and existence. Additionally, it interestingly comments on the effects resulting from the loss of individuality, through the horrific spectacle of seeing your physical replica slowly but surely dominate your own existence whilst phasing you out entirely.
This is an exciting continuation of Ayoade’s helming career, and with excellent cameos from the aforementioned Paddy Considine, the supreme Chris Morris and the always entertaining Chris O’Dowd, I’d recommend it to anyone with an open mind for a different type of cinematic outing.
