REVIEW - NOAH

When they speak of 'the creator', one wonders to whom they are referring: god? Or Darren Aronofsky? A flood of reason might have washed away the sins he commits in trying to be all things to all people in his adaptation of the biblical fable of Noah's ark. Aronofsky doesn't lack focus - he comes across quite aware of what he wants to achieve - but for all the years of preparation, he lacks quality in his craft, clarity in his writing. His own ark, physically, is robust enough to weather the most brutal of storms, but theologically and politically flimsy and adolescent. One admires him for his intention and his ambition, but wishes that he had afforded his ideas, which are as massive as they are many, further time to develop in his mind before splurging them, ungainly and ill-fitting, onto celluloid. You may feel jostled, often hastily, between points of view, interpretations of the classic myth that repel one another, or conflict in a manner that is not easily reconciled. What Aronofsky suggests as his own flood, to dispel whatever illogical complexities his film has amassed, is too often simplistic. He stages action, not violence, which is a betrayal of this tale's very nature. In fact, Noah's strongest moments are invariably its most grim. Its strongest assets are its spectacular landscapes, though there frequently appears to be a dilemma at hand between whether they are the story or their inhabitants are - for all that this Noah represents the cliche of man's relationship with the natural world, this aspect of the storytelling, like so many others, quickly becomes garbled as it is added to the infernal mixture of thoughts and concepts, raining down on the film. And still, its sheer audacity is often highly moving, and the results it yields sometimes breathtaking, and thus Aronofsky's creation, wholly borrowed yet wholly his own, is no misfire. It's a mad, bad curiosity, sensorially stunning, but so intellectually confused that I need never see it again. Its qualities, though numerous, have run their course with me already.