Noah (Throwback Review)

I'm a rarity. I'm a person who both knows the story of Noah very well, having been raised a Christian, and yet is no longer a Christian. It leaves me in, what I see as, the best place. I can see this as a religious story of meaning as well as a film. I think it succeeds in both regards, actually very well. 

I have one general, sweeping problem with religious movies in general, and that problem is the inability to NOT believe. It sounds backwards, but what makes any religious movie suck is its forced perception that it is simple to prove that God exists. That is not the case. You can show me a million sunsets, a million births, a million miracles, and there simply is no proof that God exists. The beauty perceived in religion is from the FAITH that a god or gods exists. There needs to be a certain potential for the faithful to be wrong, or to see at least where the fear in belief would be. Noah completely succeeds at this. We never see God. We never hear or see any proof of a diety. We see miracles, however they're more in the realm of magic than God. Even these Watchers, fallen angels forced to live as stone golems for their days on earth, never really feel intrusive. To me, the atheist, they could be anything. In a world where the religion is final and yet never seen, they could be just as jaded as the people around them.

That raises another point. The biggest complaint I see from people about this film are the existence of these "watchers" for their lack of mention in the bible. The people making these claims are missing two points. 1) this film is about Noah, not God. It's about humanity and believability in a world where the religion is eventually proven true. 2) The watchers serve a purpose. They are not there to be controversial, they're not even there to make a stupid point. They're there to have a conceivable way to build the ark in the timely fashion mentioned in the bible. More importantly, they're a way to show no disproof of existence. You can't prove they DIDN'T exists. Just like we can't totally disprove the idea of Noah. No one was there. And to those who haven't seen the movie, this may or may not be a spoiler, but it's not like these golems could potentially leave fossils behind.

And that's where Noah succeeds. It makes not only a scenario as believable as possible given its outlandish circumstances. But it mostly succeeds with its characters. another point of contention for many a religious follower. To me, the obvious mistake with any religious movie is the lack of interesting characters. To make Noah not only human but actually a bit frightening in his resolve is interesting, and a very welcome interpretation. 

Noah isn't perfect. It has questionable scenes, pointless plot points, an overabundance of characters, and a bit of a heavy-handed characterization style. But it succeeds in what many movies of similar religious background fail at. It's an interesting, exciting, and well written story for the non religious. It puts my hopes for Ridley Scott's Moses movie, coming out later this are, very high!

Rank - 4/5