Reykjavík Grapevine - 23.05.2014, Blaðsíða 27

Man, fuck Darren Aronofsky.
Fuck his weak, hacky, hammy, pretentious, melodra-
matic, student-filmmaking-with-a-budget shit. I’ve always
been mystified as to how it is he gets people to buy his
overdone soap opera crap as serious film, but I’m confi-
dent 'Noah'—a retelling of the renowned Biblical yarn with
all the animals on the boat, shot largely in Iceland—will
finally be his undoing; it will expose his shoddily construct-
ed ‘films’ for what they are: overwrought and overrated
pandering to fad-driven art-house wannabes who are too
impatient for genuine counterculture film, but too proud to
admit they’d rather be watching a Michael Bay movie.
Words
Sindri Eldon
Uh, No:
Darren Aronofsky’s ‘Noah’
27The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 06 — 2014 FILM
I heard the sound of their wings
Ich hörte das Rauschen ihrer FlügelJ’entendais le bruit de leurs ailesjeg hørte lyden af deres vingerÉg heyrði þytinn frá vængjum þeirraaudiebam sonum alarum
LÁRA BRYNDÍS EGGERTSDÓTTIR
at the Klais organ of Hallgrímskirkja
PREMIÈRE OF NEW ICELANDIC ORGAN MUSIC
commissioned by Lára Bryndís Eggertsdóttir
Sunday June 1st at 5 pm
Admission 2.500 ISK
Ticket sale at the entrance one hour before the concert
CD and sheet music available in Hallgrímskirkja or through www.audiebam.is
Listvinafélag Hallgrímskirkju 32. starfsár /
The Friends of the Arts Society Hallgrimskirkja 32nd season
www.listvinafelag.is
CONCERT
R E V I E W
FILM
R E V I E W
Not that 'Noah' makes any kind of serious
attempt to disguise itself as an art-house
film. Occasional bouts of faux time-lapse
notwithstanding, Noah is a through-and-
through fantasy/adventure film, com-
plete with an epic battle between teem-
ing hordes of sword-wielding soldiers
and CGI monsters, a glowering Russell
Crowe yelling at people for no reason,
Emma Watson running around a forest
while being distraught and a Shake-
spearian actor playing an old wizard.
…or at least the first act is. Confus-
ingly enough, once 'Noah' has dispensed
with the Tolkienesque antics in its set-up
(although it comes across more ‘Battle-
field: Earth’ than Battle of Helm’s Deep), it
scrambles desperately to squeeze some
human drama out of its vague environ-
mentalist parable/Biblical tale, conjur-
ing up some of Aronofsky’s typically
trite melodrama and leaving Jennifer
Connelly, champ that she is, to act her
ass off to try to establish some pathos.
She receives no help from the woefully
underequipped Watson, the perennially
miscast Ray Winstone, the near-invisible
Logan Lerman, the laughably handsome
Douglas Booth and least of all from her
stone-faced co-star, with whom she has
exactly zero chemistry, and as a conse-
quence her efforts fall sadly short. The
flimsy drama reaches its ‘climax’ when
Aronofsky reaches into his big bag of
button-pushing shockers to prove how
edgy he is and retrieves: infanticide! Oh,
no he didn’t!
The film’s conclusion then provides
closure in a weirdly obligatory fashion,
like it was a necessity rather than a part
of the story anybody felt any real inter-
est in telling. The cast all mumbles very
automatically through some equally au-
tomatic dialogue, and it all ends with a
Bible quote and some impossibly cheesy
nature shots. One is left wondering why
anyone considering himself a serious
director would choose to tackle such
incredibly familiar and polarizing subject
matter and then barely break the surface
of it; it’s like finally getting your hands on
a book you’ve always wanted to read, and
then just skimming it or reading the Cliff-
sNotes.
As I mentioned earlier, Aronofsky
seems somewhat intrigued by the idea of
Noah’s fable as an environmentalist tale,
with Cain’s evil descendants being seen
strip-mining the Earth, possibly caus-
ing God to initiate the great deluge and
thereby making Noah the first climate
change activist. If the intention here is
to advocate militant environmentalism to
the Christian right, then I wish the movie
the best of luck; Noah is certainly sim-
plistic enough to be understood by fun-
damentalists, fraught as it is by one-di-
mensional characters, predictable story
arcs and everyone getting pretty much
what they deserve.
Was the point here maybe some sort
of genre exercise? Did Aronofsky simply
feel like spending $125 million to make
a purposely shallow and insipid biblical
movie? Is he just the Liam Lynch of film-
makers, parodying genres by ridiculing
their conventions, like some sort of artsy
heir to Abrahams, Zucker and Zucker?
Or is he showing us, with his computer-
ized rock monsters, prehistoric industrial
society and healing magic how ridiculous
it is that 2.2 billion people believe such an
impossible tale has literal truth?
However, the point is somewhat
moot, for despite all its multiple smaller
shortcomings, the film's chief sin is that
it’s boring. No, seriously: it’s fucking
boring as shit. Aronofsky simply doesn’t
have the energy or the sense of fun to
direct a blockbuster adventure film, and
the choppy, uneven editing destroys
any pacing or gravitas the movie might
otherwise have had. It also fails as a mo-
rality tale because of its pitiable lack of
depth or characters, and it even fails as
a purely aesthetic object d’art: as George
Lucas learned (or would have learned,
if he had listened to anyone other than
the massive, talking dollar signs he sees
when he closes his eyes), all the special
effects in the world don’t mean shit if
they don’t have context or atmosphere to
contain them. There is some admittedly
cool mise-en-scéne on the ark itself as it
creaks aimlessly through the deluge, but
it’s hardly enough to save this sorry mess
of a film.
In short, Aronofsky has wronged us,
himself and the whole world once again
by delivering a thumping wad of ego-tas-
tic hyperbole that possesses all the sub-
tlety and intricacy of a facial stabbing. It
is yet another two-hours-plus of an over-
paid film student with nothing interesting
to say masturbating teeny-bopper imag-
inings vigorously enough to impress only
the shallowest and most gullible viewers.
It’s so pointless it’s hard even to hate it,
and yet, I find I hate it almost as much as
I hate all his other movies.