Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

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Matt
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#26 Post by Matt » Thu Oct 24, 2013 3:54 pm

domino harvey wrote:This looks about exactly how I expected a 2013-filmed Biblical epic to look, not sure what everyone is dumping on it for?
Maybe people were expecting the relatively restrained storytelling Aronofsky of The Wrestler and Black Swan, not the feverish effects nerd who made The Fountain. Of course a shitty trailer with awful music could just be a desperate studio attempt to sell an unsellable movie that's actually pretty decent?

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mfunk9786
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#27 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Oct 24, 2013 4:22 pm

I'll admit that my bias against legitimizing this sort of goofy story is probably influencing my viewing of the trailer, but it just doesn't seem to be doing anything interestingly enough to make it worth telling the whole Noah story again. Of course, it's a trailer, so there could be a depth or darkness that isn't coming through, but it's just a Sunday school pop-up book come to life as far as I can see, and I am having a hard time figuring out where the value for the religiously neutral viewer is here. The Noah story isn't exactly one of literature's most riveting classics or anything.

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captveg
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#28 Post by captveg » Thu Oct 24, 2013 4:24 pm

Eh, I think it looks decent.

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Kirkinson
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#29 Post by Kirkinson » Thu Oct 24, 2013 4:52 pm

I don't think it looks particularly good or anything (despite some nice shots), but like domino I think it looks exactly like what I was expecting, so I'm a little surprised at the reaction, too, though I also agree that the trailer is far too long and that music at the end is pretty ridiculous.

It really has its work cut out if it wants to surpass my favorite film adaptation of this story, though.

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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#30 Post by cdnchris » Thu Oct 24, 2013 4:57 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:I'll admit that my bias against legitimizing this sort of goofy story is probably influencing my viewing of the trailer, but it just doesn't seem to be doing anything interestingly enough to make it worth telling the whole Noah story again. Of course, it's a trailer, so there could be a depth or darkness that isn't coming through, but it's just a Sunday school pop-up book come to life as far as I can see, and I am having a hard time figuring out where the value for the religiously neutral viewer is here. The Noah story isn't exactly one of literature's most riveting classics or anything.
It's a fable, though, and a popular one, and it probably could make a decent film if done right. For me it's no different than any fantasy movie. All that being said the trailer is terrible but I get the feeling they're really trying to market it to a certain audience. I'm guessing the same ones they hoped went to see Passion of the Christ.

rohming
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#31 Post by rohming » Thu Oct 24, 2013 6:27 pm

Besides my comment about the trailer being long, I don't doubt my perception of this trailer is being somewhat colored by my reaction to the story outline and details as given by the other board's thread that I mentioned. The biggest thing I came away with from their descriptions was the sense that it's completely unclear as to why Aronofsky made this movie. Supposedly, it doesn't work as a drama, or as a genre piece, or as concept, or anything, really. And as far as it being a movie made to appeal to the devout or The Passion of the Christ audience, I don't know, I think those people will loathe some of the liberties taken.

It'll probably be better than the Hallmark movie where Salieri is Lot is a pirate. Maybe.

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jindianajonz
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#32 Post by jindianajonz » Thu Oct 24, 2013 6:38 pm

rohming wrote:The biggest thing I came away with from their descriptions was the sense that it's completely unclear as to why Aronofsky made this movie.
That's what I'm wondering. Is he making it due to personal religious conviction, or for other reasons?

Noah seems like an odd choice, either way. As people have said, it's a fairly simple fable, but even from a religious standpoint it's probably the second hardest part of the bible to read literally, after Adam and Eve. Even among the faithful I'd wager there are few who view it more than metaphorically.

It could be kind of cool if he could somehow incorporate elements from the various flood myths of different cultures, but that would be quite an undertaking, not to mention it would carry a high risk of failure.

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Professor Wagstaff
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#33 Post by Professor Wagstaff » Thu Oct 24, 2013 6:45 pm

Someone close to me attended a test screening and said little about the film besides the fact that it always seemed at odds with itself as far as intent, particularly a 'Lord of the Rings' level of spectacle that didn't dragged the movie down.

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John Cope
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#34 Post by John Cope » Thu Oct 24, 2013 6:52 pm

This assessment has been floating around for awhile. I realize that this guy has his own agenda (who doesn't?) but if the details of the script are accurate as he reports them then that would seem to me to be more of an issue because they are risible to say the least.

I've never liked Aronofsky much (Pi and The Wrestler are his only two films which I think are genuinely great) but he has certainly shown himself to be capable and I'm hoping that's what we'll get from this picture. But I'm not kidding myself as I suspect that he'll be inclined to fall into the realm of The Fountain and that would be disastrous. Still, I'm not put off by the early negative reaction. An unorthodox, even heretical treatment of material like this is not inherently worthwhile but neither is a straight down the line pious treatment. A contentious or divided response would seem the best possible one. I do like the purportedly vaguely defined period setting though it makes me wish they'd just given the project to Matthew Barney. The mind reels at what he would do with $130 million.

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knives
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#35 Post by knives » Thu Oct 24, 2013 7:17 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:I'll admit that my bias against legitimizing this sort of goofy story is probably influencing my viewing of the trailer, but it just doesn't seem to be doing anything interestingly enough to make it worth telling the whole Noah story again. Of course, it's a trailer, so there could be a depth or darkness that isn't coming through, but it's just a Sunday school pop-up book come to life as far as I can see, and I am having a hard time figuring out where the value for the religiously neutral viewer is here. The Noah story isn't exactly one of literature's most riveting classics or anything.
How is this story any more goofy than any other story (though I do maintain that Huston got it right staging it as a comedy)? Just because something is biblical doesn't make it instantly awful in some way. I also highly doubt that Aronofsky is going to be doing a sunday school version whatever that means.

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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#36 Post by Arrow » Thu Oct 24, 2013 7:58 pm

knives wrote:
mfunk9786 wrote:I'll admit that my bias against legitimizing this sort of goofy story is probably influencing my viewing of the trailer, but it just doesn't seem to be doing anything interestingly enough to make it worth telling the whole Noah story again. Of course, it's a trailer, so there could be a depth or darkness that isn't coming through, but it's just a Sunday school pop-up book come to life as far as I can see, and I am having a hard time figuring out where the value for the religiously neutral viewer is here. The Noah story isn't exactly one of literature's most riveting classics or anything.
How is this story any more goofy than any other story (though I do maintain that Huston got it right staging it as a comedy)? Just because something is biblical doesn't make it instantly awful in some way. I also highly doubt that Aronofsky is going to be doing a sunday school version whatever that means.
I just assumed when I heard this film was being made that the point was to show the absurdity of the fable that so many people take literally.

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domino harvey
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#37 Post by domino harvey » Thu Oct 24, 2013 8:45 pm

Am I crazy or was this originally announced as a sci-fi take on the Noah story? Was that another film?

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knives
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#38 Post by knives » Thu Oct 24, 2013 8:48 pm

You might be mixing it with the Ramsey Moby Dick.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#39 Post by Mr Sausage » Thu Oct 24, 2013 9:08 pm

I think the only thing I want less than a preachy bible-school version of this story is a contemptuous one--contemptuous of the story itself and, as a corollary, those who might literally believe it.

Anyway, a potential problem: this kind of story is fundamentally naive (I don't mean that judgmentally--it's just the only word I can think to describe this kind of fable). Which is fine, up until it meets a sensibility that isn't functioning with a similar naivety, leaving you with a story at odds with itself: fundamentally naive and yet told as though it were profound, serious, and complex. Imagine a two-hour, issue-laden, richly scored, heavily-filtered, massively expanded telling of redridinghood...that stays completely faithful to the source-text. An amusing thought, but also really inappropriate. So I wonder about this movie. I don't necessarily think it'll live down to its trailer, but it does seem like it'll have a hell of a time avoiding the above problem of treating something naive with both a modern Hollywood sense of complexity and a profound reverence.

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knives
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#40 Post by knives » Thu Oct 24, 2013 9:17 pm

That's something I agree with, again for those who haven't seen it watch Huston's laugh filled version, and my only fear for the film is that it will fit with the grim and gritty tone of modern films which the casting of Crowe certainly suggests to me. That said I doubt greatly that Aronofsky would do the film contemptuously given how he has engaged religion, specifically Jewish mysticism, in the past. For as many things about the film are up in the air the way he's spoken of the project and his past work leave no doubt that he is engaging the material out of love.

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domino harvey
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#41 Post by domino harvey » Thu Oct 24, 2013 9:20 pm

Huston's The Bible is indeed great, and worth noting that outside of the light-hearted Noah sequence it's actually pretty dark in its interpretations of Biblical stories

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knives
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#42 Post by knives » Thu Oct 24, 2013 9:27 pm

That's true. It's definitely my favorite bible movie (I believe Bresson originally was attached and there are elements of it with the Adam and Eve) though I think I prefer Crumb's recent comic.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#43 Post by Mr Sausage » Thu Oct 24, 2013 9:41 pm

knives wrote:That's something I agree with, again for those who haven't seen it watch Huston's laugh filled version, and my only fear for the film is that it will fit with the grim and gritty tone of modern films which the casting of Crowe certainly suggests to me. That said I doubt greatly that Aronofsky would do the film contemptuously given how he has engaged religion, specifically Jewish mysticism, in the past. For as many things about the film are up in the air the way he's spoken of the project and his past work leave no doubt that he is engaging the material out of love.
I don't think he'll be contemptuous, either. That was a response to the poster above who thought the movie was going to be used to skewer the story and those who believe it.

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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#44 Post by Arrow » Thu Oct 24, 2013 10:33 pm

Mr Sausage wrote:
knives wrote:That's something I agree with, again for those who haven't seen it watch Huston's laugh filled version, and my only fear for the film is that it will fit with the grim and gritty tone of modern films which the casting of Crowe certainly suggests to me. That said I doubt greatly that Aronofsky would do the film contemptuously given how he has engaged religion, specifically Jewish mysticism, in the past. For as many things about the film are up in the air the way he's spoken of the project and his past work leave no doubt that he is engaging the material out of love.
I don't think he'll be contemptuous, either. That was a response to the poster above who thought the movie was going to be used to skewer the story and those who believe it.
I guess I feel stupid now for thinking that, it just seemed more likely than a "Passion of the Christ" type film given the material.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#45 Post by matrixschmatrix » Thu Oct 24, 2013 10:55 pm

From the trailer, it looks as though the movie is identifying with the moral idea that keeping the vast majority of people off the boat, and letting them drown for being what they are, is righteous- which isn't particularly out of line with the morality that exists in a lot of the Old Testament (though I wouldn't claim to be an expert) but seems like putting it to a modern audience would be hard without couching it in irony or seeming pretty horrifying.

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knives
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#46 Post by knives » Thu Oct 24, 2013 10:59 pm

Well the point of the story, much like the later Lot story, is that humanity had become by that point completely unsavagable and the species more or less had to start anew. If the people outside of Noah's family were shown to be horrible enough I'm sure a modern audience raised on action movie morality would be fine with that.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#47 Post by matrixschmatrix » Thu Oct 24, 2013 11:00 pm

Well, I guess, but it's still pretty much siding with genocide. Also, I don't know that that is the point of the story, but I think that's probably an argument that I'd want to educate myself further before taking part in. At any rate, most of the Noah tellings I've seen get around that issue by having absolutely nobody believe him, so that he's more of a Cassandra figure, desperately trying to save everyone rather than a guy kicking people out of a lifeboat (but taking aboard a pair of elephants, I guess.)

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knives
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#48 Post by knives » Thu Oct 24, 2013 11:11 pm

That would be a pretty different version than in the OT (though the story was around for about a thousand years before that in various forms). If Aronofsky were keeping with the general outline of the bible than Noah would be acting out of plot to be a cassandra. Also I think it is a bit wrong to approach this story, or any ancient fable, with the modern mentality suggested by genocide in this instant (also if I remember rightly there were more than two of each animal by that's irrelevant).

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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#49 Post by Arrow » Thu Oct 24, 2013 11:15 pm

I'm so used to the Noah story being either taken as hard fact or a complete joke I didn't imagine a serious take on it as the telling of an ancient story.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

#50 Post by matrixschmatrix » Thu Oct 24, 2013 11:22 pm

I know that the tellings I mentioned are revisionist, but that's kind of my point- I agree that modern moral precepts don't particularly apply to the storytelling of the OT, Noah the movie is a modern artifact and as such is going to exist in a modern moral framework. So, it could highlight the disparity between 'Biblical' morality and anything that would be acceptable in the modern world- which would essentially make Noah the bad guy- it could commit to sticking with the same moral framework in which the story exists, as it seems to be doing- in which case the morality of it is pretty horrifying, as it really is ennobling an act of genocide- or it could sidestep the issue altogether by making convenient changes to the story, as every other telling I've seen has.

I'm not sure any of those options are good, but certainly going with the mass murder is great version seems like the worst of them.

(In case this is unclear, I don't really think that critique applies to the original story, as you're totally correct that it exists in an entirely different context- I don't want to get into a Bible bashing argument here by any means.)

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