Visionary auteur meets studio,
agrees to make the ultimate disaster movie. Hilarity ensues.
It is easy to predict how Aronofsky as
a consistent auteur will adapt and clarify the brief, sketchy, and
rather problematic deluge narrative from the Book of Genesis into a
feature film, then measure the distance from the actual product and
sound off the discordant notes.
The story of Noah offers several
ready-made themes and motifs that seem tailored to Aronofsky: the
figure of a true believer and fanatic (and the often bodily
sacrifices they are willing to make), disturbing hallucinatory
visions, and the duality of faith and madness, of good and evil. For
a man described as ‘blameless in his generation’, Noah sure did
odd things like placing a curse on his grandson’s descendants and
hence condemning a full third of humanity to slavery for no clear
reason, and getting drunk on wine and getting indecorously uncovered.
One would expect Aronofsky the auteur
to present Noah as a profoundly good man with profound flaws, to
delve into the ancient rabbinical opinion that this ‘righteous man
blameless in his generation’ was only righteous relative to the
depravity of his generation, and also to explain the return of sin
and fallenness to a post-deluge world by insisting it never quite
left in the first place...
We identify three “innovations” of
this feature adaptation that taken together, point towards the
current balance of power between independent directors and the modern
studio. We believe that if no studio interference has been reported
at the scripting and shooting stage, and no re-shooting was done, the
aesthetic compromises made in the film would have been made by the
director himself at pre-production or editing. In other words, any
compromises were self-inflicted even if the studio system itself
played a role in the considerations.
First, the “rock giants” who help
Noah build and later defend his ark. These creations come across as
laughably out of place with the rest of the film, existing only to
provide an Epic Noisy Battle Scene to justify the film’s budget to
studio executives.
Secondly, the character of King
Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone, chewing up as much scenery before it’s
destroyed by the flood, then chewing up the ark after the flood) as a
nemesis for Noah. The comically evil Tubal-Cain is an empire-builder,
a weapon-smith, a man who sees what is before him and declares to
dominate it, in contrast with Noah as vegan, environmentalist, and
prehistoric (or post-apocalyptic) Johnny Appleseed. As much as this
pairing provides a villain and a conventional struggle for the
purposes of a mainstream blockbuster, we imagine a truly independent
auteur version of Aronofsky would have presented the antagonist as
existing in a duality with Noah—not just another fanatic and
believer, but someone whose mandate to dominate (coded repulsive and
evil in the film) is issued from the lips of Noah by Genesis 9. We
note that Aronofsky sets up the duality throughout the film (Noah the
pacifist, vegan, and environmentalist is suspiciously adept with
weaponry and killing, and like Tubal-Cain, is willing to shed the
blood of innocents to achieve a vision) and yet fails to deliver the
punchline.
Finally, Aronofsky’s treatment of the
Curse of Ham. In his retelling, the director recasts the narrative as
a coming-of-age tale where the imperfections and hypocrisy of a
father generates conflict, alienation, and ultimately rejection from
his maturing son. Again, we note that Aronofsky sets up the conflict,
alienation, and rejection in the course of the film while failing to
deliver the full punchline. We also note that the set-up is
incomplete due to the aborted project of casting Tubal-Cain and Noah
as the reverse sides of a single duality.
In its released form, Noah is simply a
film that Darren Aronofsky would not have made.
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