days of noah movie review

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'the ark and the darkness' challenges modern myths about noah's flood, link to end times.

In an era when biblical narratives are often relegated to the realm of mythology, the "Ark and the Darkness" documentary seeks to reframe one of history's most debated tales: Noah's Flood. 

"The evidence for the flood is really, really overwhelming," Dan Biddle, executive producer of " The Ark and The Darkness: Unearthing the Mysteries of Noah's Flood " and president of Genesis Apologetics, told The Christian Post. 

"There are a lot of misconceptions about the flooding. And Hollywood not only doesn't represent the true biblical account, they add a lot of mythologies and a lot of themes that are just clearly not biblical. ... The two biggest misconceptions would be mythologizing the flood, saying it's an allegory, it didn't really happen. The other one that's actually within Christian circles is, 'It was just a local flood, God's judgment was only pertaining to the people living in Mesopotamia Valley.' … Our movie shows it wasn't an allegory; it happened in real-time just thousands of years ago, and it was a worldwide event."

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"The Ark and the Darkness," from Sevenfold Films in collaboration with Genesis Apologetics, bridges the gap between various scientific disciplines — geology, paleontology, the study of fossils, ancient civilizations, volcanic activity and Earth sciences — all pointing unanimously to the reality of Noah's Flood. 

The documentary features experts, including scientists from Answers in Genesis and Liberty University, like Dr. Andrew Snelling, paleontologist Dr. Gabriela Haynes and researcher and speaker Dr. Terry Mortenson, who uncover the factual basis of Noah's Flood.

The film hit theaters on Wednesday and Thursday. 

Biddle pointed to a variety of scientific findings he said corroborate the biblical account, including the discovery of bioorganic materials in dinosaur bones, which suggests they were buried rapidly and relatively recently. 

"There's no way that these tissues could have lasted for millions upon millions of years," he said.

The documentary, directed by Ralph Strean, explores the Morrison Formation, a geological site spanning 13 states in the middle of America, which contains a vast number of dinosaur fossils intermingled with marine life. 

"How could you take a 13-state zone region and bury land creatures and marine creatures together over that much of an expanse?" Biddle asked. "The answer has to be a worldwide flood."

Beyond presenting physical evidence, "The Ark and the Darkness" also delves into the implications of Noah's Flood for understanding the state of the world today. Drawing parallels between the days of Noah and contemporary times, Biddle highlighted a perceived increase in lawlessness and moral decay, echoing biblical prophecies of the End Times. 

"We just look around the world today, and it seems like a stage is being set for some interesting things," he said. "I'm not a doomsayer, I'm not a sensationalist, I'm not even really a prepper. But I would just say that most Christians nowadays can look around the landscape and say, 'Yeah, there's a lot of shift going on.' It's not a time to be fearful. It's a time to trust in the Lord, to run in our lanes, and to trust Him for both our short-term lives and what's going to happen in a longer play. Jesus Himself draws that parallel between the flood and End Times, and so we do the same thing in the movie."

The film counters evolutionary arguments, suggesting that Noah's Ark could indeed have housed representatives of all animal kinds necessary to repopulate the Earth post-flood. Biddle challenged the notion that the ark's capacity would have been insufficient, proposing that only around 7,000 animals were needed to account for the biodiversity seen today.

"One of the most popular allegations is … there's no way that Noah could have taken all of those different species on Earth today on the ark because there are millions and millions of species. … But that's one of the things that the Bible addresses straight out of Genesis and chapter one," he said.

"The experts at Answers in Genesis believe that you only need 7,000 animals total on the ark to reproduce all the different species and all the different breeds that we see today. So that would be one aspect of how we go against evolution theory in the movie," Biddle added.

Biddle also expressed concern over the growing trend among Christians to interpret the story of Noah's Flood as allegorical rather than historical. 

"We hear a lot of people say they're just New Testament Christians," he said. "If that's true, please explain to me the Gospel without citing Genesis, and no one can do it."

Biddle stressed that understanding the Gospel's message of salvation is impossible without acknowledging the reality of sin introduced through Adam in the Garden of Eden. According to Biddle, denying the historical truth of events like Noah's Flood undermines the entire biblical narrative, including the teachings of Jesus and the writings of New Testament authors who referenced the flood as a factual event.

"It really cripples the Gospel message to say that either the garden or Adam or the flood was a myth," he said. 

Biddle hopes viewers, regardless of their religious or scientific background, reconsider the historical validity of Noah's Flood. 

"I think every person who watches this movie, from a hardened, licensed geologist who's a complete atheist all the way to a homeschool Christian who believes every word of Scripture, … will be shifted, shifted towards believing more about historic Christianity," he said. "It would be really hard to sit through an hour and 52 minutes worth of this avalanche of evidence and not come out believing, 'My gosh, I think they have a case.' And, we do."

For information and tickets for "The Ark and The Darkness,"  click here .

Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: [email protected]

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DAYS OF NOAH DOCUMENTARY FILM SERIES DVD SET

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What our customers say...

This series is the truth, comprehensively so, and easy to understand. Once I found out it was produced by Seventh Day Adventists, I headed to my local SDA church and have done a few Bible studies with a nice member couple who have only helped to reinforce the same teachings of this video series. I have watched it several times on Amazon Prime but I wanted the series in hard copy for myself to watch whenever I want and to share with others. Thank you! Rated by Sarah

Fantastic! An immense blessing! The quality of this video is so great we know God’s hand was definitely in the making of this series. We’re giving copies to as many people as possible! Rated by All for God’s glory! [Verified Buyer]

Absolutely love this series! We held a 4 part movie night at our church and it was a hit. So many people wanted to buy DVDs to have and share with family. We will be purchasing more!! Rated by Paul

Wow! This documentary series is worth every penny! It is very well made and presents each topic clearly. There is a ton of information in this documentary series. We have passed these out to family and friends. Three of our children who have watched this series have accepted the Sabbath! One had a total conversion! She posted her testimony on Facebook and invited everyone to watch The Days of Noah. The others are looking into God's Word to learn more about the topics presented in this series. Others to whom we gave The Days of Noah DVDs asked for copies of their own to pass out to their families and friend! God is using The Days of Noah series to bring people to the knowledge of the 3 angel's messages... and to the foot of the cross! This is a great missionary tool! I don't know how to preach the 3 angel's messages very well... but I know how to give out DVDs! Rated by Erica

I love this documentary!! It is well written and it gave me answers to a few questions I was searching for. I recommend this series to anyone who wants to know what is coming in the very near future. Thank you for creating this for all to see. God Bless Rated by Mark

I have watched all the documentaries that are based on the final message of warning the world (Revelation 14:6-12;18:1-4) this one is by far the very best I have ever seen. The special effects, the succinctness, the emotion that it evoked inside me. To be brutally honest, this is the only commentary that I would not be ashamed of in sharing with my friends and Bible Study interests. Nothing about it is cheesy or dated. I would give six stars if I could. Rated by John

i am so proud to share this series and to give it as a gift. The graphics, scenery and presentation are truly stunning. Usually my husband falls asleep during any spiritual presentations, but not this one! In fact, he watched the entire series straight through. I had bought 3 to use as sharing and study tools, and am purchasing 3 more as gifts. You've really outdone yourself on this project, and the presentations of the sanctuary, great controversy and plan of salvation are so beautiful. I can't recommend this series enough, and am anxiously awaiting the study guides to complete the project. Rated by Lori Fisher

This documentary series was absolutely phenomenal!! What an impressive presentation that was riveting from start to finish!! VERY well done! Easy for even my home schooled 9 year old to watch and be able to understand much better due to the visual aids and clear, easy to understand verbiage, terminology, explanations and storyline through history. This is just so well done, I was blown away! This DVD follows through history, to the present time, to the near future in such a clear way that this is excellent for Adventists, non-Adventist Christians and non-Christians! It's truly perfect for anyone and everyone if they just take the time to view even the first 5 minutes of the first DVD, I'm sure they will be so riveted that it is hard to not sit and watching the entire series at once. I couldn't get enough of it! I wanted to sponge up the entire story at once. THIS DVD series truly captures it ALL in a single series. You get the history like you do Amazing Facts "Revelation: The Bride, The Beast & Babylon" dvd. There is the history of the apostolic churches and then Constantine's influence similar to the DVD series by Shawn Boonstra "The Shadow Empire" & "The pale horse rides" of history before & through the dark ages. You get the Sanctuary service "blueprint" by Ivor Myers laid out, the removal of every sanctuary item through the dark ages, then how/when each sanctuary service item is brought back to life through the protestant reformation. Something few Christians seem to be aware of today. There is also similar parts like you see in the DVD "Tell it to the World" with the history from William Miller, EGW the Great Disappointment etc. And how the Sabbath truth was discovered again. Not to mention incredible host start to finish, the interviews through-out the entire series from all backgrounds, several that were raised in the Catholic church and 'get it'. Walter Veith with his incredible experiences, studies and intellect is also on this series. Is is a DVD that includes so many of the "watchmen on the wall" all on a single series working together to share truth with the world. Toward the 3rd & 4th DVDs, it brings you to the present time, which shows actual video clips from OUR present time, our world, our news, our people, our lives NOW, shown to speak for themselves. It's not a scary doomsday prediction or wild far off wild claims - but the here and now showing live video feed of our world today, what we're living in right now, and they speak volumes all on their own. The way that was done, was spot on! It truly lets the world speak for itself where it is all on it's own, and the viewer can process that without someone telling them about where we are in the world today, or where we are headed. Then the future scenes unfold in the DVD, so close is the here & now clips with the future return of the Lord. It was not scary, but comforting to see how the Lord will provide for His faithful steadfast followers. It was heart wrenching to realize how many of us have too busy lives to slow down and realize what is right upon us. This film cut to my heart with such conviction, how we need to stop and realize where we are, and what are we doing with what little time we have left? How are we prioritizing going forward. The comparison to Noah's time & his warning of the coming judgement that was laughed and scoffed at, and ignored.... I had never realized how much we are mirroring that exact same time in history all over again, and when that clicked, it dawned on me what little time we have left to make our choice. I also wanted to add that it helped immensely to have the Bible show that it is the Lord's plan and intent for His followers to strive to step away from the life of sin, to walk with Him day by day and each day cut out sin from our lives more and more. He's taking each of His followers on the heart searching, convicting road less traveled to remove every spot, every blemish of sin from our lives now. Which made sense to me after watching this series - if one is a true christian follower of Christ looking to reflect His image, that is a image that refrains from sin, and we can do that when Christ works through us. It will be His people who have chosen to abstain from sin, that will be able to stand in His presence at His coming. I also did not realize the many descriptions of God being an all consuming fire, until Bible text after Bible text was shown in this documentary. I had not realized the meaning behind the fiery furnace. Very powerful series that will make a lasting impression on every viewer, no matter where they are in their walk with the Lord, or in the world. Perfect witness share DVD, if that wasn't already apparent! Every church should have a copy of this to share with the congregation and then for the community to be invited to view also. This should be a regular witnessing tool to reach so many that do not otherwise read books or even go to church. It did not overlook the details, even for the future scenes - I was impressed where the remnant ones that have the seal of God are escaping from those of the world who strive to harm them, and it shows the 'strong armed men' appear to protect the remnant individuals out of no where.... just as we've been told that heavenly angels clothed as armed men, will protect God's sealed followers. Such little details that are there visually, really puts into this series, so very much and compacts it in a clear, easy to follow and easy to understand way. The visual timeline is unforgettable and beyond words helpful. My only regret is that I didn't buy more DVDs the first time around, but will next time as there are too many lives that I know that can be touched by this film series. Thank you for making this!! Rated by Jenee Rose

This Noah Documentary is worth every penny and more. Outstanding video footage and truth-filled content presented in a way you have never seen before. Congratulations to all the crew and God's blessing to you for blessing us. Rated by Rocco Maccarone

The Days of Noah Documentary film series was so well put together that I can’t say enough about it. My husband and I have already watched it 7 times and love it more each time. You will never get tired of viewing it. It is so relevant for the times that we are living in and a must see for anyone searching for truth and answers to all the upheavals happening in our world. Every time I watch this, I am amazed at how well this was put together. I would give it 20 stars if there were such a rating as it is that excellent of a documentary film. Thank you for blessing us with The Days of Noah!! Rated by Marlene

I absolutely love this documentary!!! It's very well put together and you couldn't have chosen better speakers to be a part of this film series. As for a witnessing tool it is great. I have a son who struggles with alcohol and I let him borrow this so he could watch it and it really answers some questions that he's had about Jesus and His love for him. The problem now is getting it back from him. May just have to buy another set. Thank you for the long hours of work and research this must have taken to put together. I strongly recommend this DVD set. Rated by Mary

Love this video series. It changed our lives. Absolutely covers all of our questions with scripture. So clear and true. Thank you for this amazing blessing. Rated by Stephen

I truly loved this 4-part series. The first time I watched it, I was just soaking up the beautiful truths presented so clearly with such compelling Bible truths. After seeing it straight through the first time, my husband and I watched it again and took extensive notes on it. It is SO wonderful and presents the truths of the nearness of Jesus soon return and the beauty of the sanctuary truth that is so clearly tied to Jesus work on our behalf. Praise Him for His amazing love and His promise to return SOON and take us home with Him. Thank you for making such a compelling set of DVD’s sharing such important messages about His amazing love for us and His work on our behalf. May God be praised!! Rated by Rusti

I watched this series on Amazon Prime and loved its accuracy in alignment with the whole scripture that I searched for a means to share it with my family members via DVD format. I just ordered 10 copies to get started sharing. If you enjoy presentations about the Bible that match what scripture has written in its pages, then you will feel empowered by the messages clarified by this content. If you have yet to read or study scripture, grab your seat belt, notepad, and pencil as you begin your journey toward understanding the focus of the messages of scripture. After viewing this documentary, and as you read and study the parts of scripture unable to fit in the limited time for the videos, supporting details will be added to confirm your understanding of The Creator's message of love for His creation. Be Blessed! Rated by Jeremiah

The Days of Noah is an excellent 4-part DVD series that covers a lot of very important information regarding spiritual matters. Every person needs to see this series. Highly recommended. Rated by Paul

This is the most comprehensive study of bible prophecy I have ever experienced. A must have for those who are seeking salvation. Rated by Carole

I stumbled on this video series during a "bad weather" afternoon and evening. I was settling in for the bad weather and browsed through a well-known video streaming service that I subscribe to. I had no idea what I was actually going to see after selecting this series but was completely tuned into the TV for the next hour or so. I sat and watched Part I and II back-to-back. I texted my family and friends about what I had just viewed because I couldn't wait to tell them about this series. As others have said, it is very well made and is all scripturally based. The commentators are all "formers", were non-believers, staunch scientists who have had the Holy Spirit work through them and they tell their own personal salvation stories which brings tears to my eyes. The series starts with the basics and gets deep and answered numerous questions I have had all of my Christian life. I have watched all parts twice! And I had to own the set for future viewings. Perfect for families to watch together and small group study and discussions! Enjoy and be blessed! Rated by LuAnn

Excellent ! Rated by charles

Outstanding Documentary, the information presented in the series is absolutely critical for every person to know. Following this information will have eternal consequences on every persons soul. Rated by Jon

Fantastic! I've watched it nearly every Sabbath Day since I received it. It's well presented and allows discerning people to compare the message in the video to the verses in the bible as well as to the accuracy of the deviation of alternate denominational teaching. GOD Bless all who participated in the creation and distribution of this series. Glory Be To GOD In The Highest! Rated by Gene

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The Days of Noah Part 1 The Flood (2019) Stream and Watch Online

Watch 'the days of noah part 1 the flood' online.

Looking to feast your eyes on ' The Days of Noah Part 1 The Flood ' on your TV, phone, or tablet? Tracking down a streaming service to buy, rent, download, or view the -directed movie via subscription can be a challenge, so we here at Moviefone want to take the pressure off. Below, you'll find a number of top-tier streaming and cable services - including rental, purchase, and subscription choices - along with the availability of 'The Days of Noah Part 1 The Flood' on each platform when they are available. Now, before we get into the various whats and wheres of how you can watch 'The Days of Noah Part 1 The Flood' right now, here are some particulars about the documentary flick. Released July 2nd, 2019, 'The Days of Noah Part 1 The Flood' stars Doug Batchelor , Stephen Bohr , Leonard Brand , Art Chadwick The movie has a runtime of about 1 hr 40 min, and received a user score of (out of 100) on TMDb, which assembled reviews from experienced users. Want to know what the movie's about? Here's the plot: "THE DAYS OF NOAH series investigates the revealing prophetic parallels between the message of Noah and the book of Revelation to uncover as never before the Truth about the Ark of refuge at the end of time and how to enter into it These prophecies such as the Antichrist the Mark of the Beast and others have left many confused about the events to come but viewed through the story of Noah and the flood these endtimes events are brought into sharp focus Discover how the Bible reveals that even today we are living in the very time of which the days of Noah were but a symbol that time is short Gods mercy is pleading with mankind and the door of the Ark is about to close forever" 'The Days of Noah Part 1 The Flood' is currently available to rent, purchase, or stream via subscription on Google Play Movies, Amazon Prime Video , YouTube, Amazon Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads, and Apple iTunes .

'The Days of Noah Part 1 The Flood' Release Dates

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THE DAYS OF NOAH series investigates the revealing prophetic parallels between the message of Noah and the book of Revelation to uncover as never before, the Truth about the Ark of refuge at the end of time and how to enter into it. These prophecies such as the Antichrist, the Mark of the Beast and others, have left many confused about the events to come, but viewed through the story of Noah and the flood, these end-times events are brought into sharp focus. Discover how the Bible reveals that even today we are living in the very time of which “the days of Noah” were but a symbol, that time is short, God’s mercy is pleading with mankind and the door of the Ark is about to close – forever.

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‘Shoot Me Up With a Big One’: The Pain of Matthew Perry’s Last Days

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By Julia Jacobs and Matt Stevens

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The Days of Noah Documentary

This is a documentary film with various known contributors including Pastor Bohr.

  The Days of Noah Series  consists of 4 films with over 6-1/2 hours of amazing content.

Here is a quick synopsis of the four films:

The Days of Noah Part 1: The Flood.  The first film brings the Genesis epic to life. Is there evidence for a global world-wide flood? See what scientists say and explore with us strong, irrefutable evidence about this cataclysmic event.

The Days of Noah Part 2: Judgment Hour.  Just before the Flood, Noah gave a judgment hour message to the world, and likewise, there is a special Biblical prophecy that foretells at the end of time another message will go forth to the world declaring "the hour of His judgment is come." (Rev 14:6) Noah invited the people to find mercy and refuge in the Ark, so too, this judgment hour message for us today points us to the final Ark of safety before the destruction of the world by fire.

The Days of Noah Part 3: The Valley of Decision.  In giving the judgment hour message to the world, Noah called people to forsake their false systems of worship and enter the Ark. The multitudes were in the valley of decision. This film explores the parallels between the message of Noah and the last messages of mercy being given to mankind. The prophecies concerning the Antichrist and the mark of the beast will bring the entire world to a crisis point, forcing all to choose whether or not they will enter the refuge of the Ark, just as it was in the days of Noah.

The Days of Noah Part 4: Ark of Fire.  The second coming of Christ is the most climactic event of all the prophecies in the Bible, and being prepared for this event is the keynote of the scriptures. Before that time, His people need to enter His Ark of Safety. How can we be sure we will be found in that end-time Ark? How may we find refuge in the Time of Trouble? The answers are clear and simple.

Good watch!

I watched the entire series then ordered four more to distribute. The documentary is designed (from disc one to four) to portray the story of Noah to be as modern as it really is. It's moving, informative, and wakes you up to the condition of the modern world and to one's own true condition. I'm in the process of watching it for the second time.

In the da7s of Noah

I seen just seen a part of the first DVD ( about 30 minutes or so) at a friend's house and with that video I knew I had to get that series! When I received my own 4 disc documentary of the days of Noah, I restarted the first disc and finished it. Then that same week, I sat down on Saturday and watch disc 2, 3 and 4 in one day, I was hooked. It is a phenomenal documentary, and the way they presented it is very easy to understand. wow I was amazed and now I'm going to watch it again at my mom's house with my sister as well. I'm going to share this information with as many people as I can. Many thanks to the people involved in producing that film, phenomenal work pack with Bible truth

True eye opening and mind blowing. Helps in strengthening my belief in the Saviour, Jesus the Christ.

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• REVIEW: Darren Aronofsky’s <i>Noah</i> Movie: Better Than the Book

REVIEW: Darren Aronofsky’s Noah Movie: Better Than the Book

M ovies aren’t supposed to be this good this early in the year. The first three months of 2014 have served up a top animated feature ( The Lego Movie ), a splendid documentary about a mad artist ( Jodorowsky’s Dune ) and that indescribable delight of The Grand Budapest Hotel . Now, to round out the trimester, Darren Aronofsky brings wild ambition and thrilling artistry to one of the Old Testament’s best-known, most dramatic, least plausible stories — Noah and the ark — with Russell Crowe infusing the role of God’s first seaman and zookeeper with all his surly majesty.

In Genesis 6:8 , God is displeased with the wickedness of men and resolves to kill all humans along with the rest of the earth’s creatures. (What did they do?) “I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created — people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” God commands the one righteous man, Noah, to build an ark, summon his family and two of every kind of living thing, and fill it with provisions for the entire menagerie. SPOILER ALERT FOR INFIDELS ONLY: After many months at sea, the water subsides, the ark’s inhabitants disperse and God promises Noah, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind … nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done … Be fruitful and multiply.” Like a golfer with an indulgent scorekeeper, humanity gets a mulligan. The penalty: all but one family must die.

In pop culture, the ark story has multiplied dozens of times, usually with a smile. John Huston played Noah as a benign patriarch in his 1966 The Bible … In the Beginning . Danny Kaye sang his way through the role in Richard Rodgers’ Broadway musical Two by Two ; and in Evan Almighty , Steve Carell was a modern Noah who got pooped on by birds and beasts alike. A rare adaptation with anything like Aronofsky’s sociopolitical seriousness was the 1928 silent film Noah’s Ark , which compares the flood (“A deluge of water drowning a world of lust”) to World War I (“A deluge of blood drowning a world of hate!”). Opening a year before the stock-market crash — which could be seen as heavenly judgment on the Jazz Age — and meant as a message of peace, Michael Curtiz’s movie stoked its own fatalities: three stunt players died during the shooting of the flood sequence.

(READ: Tim Newcomb on the battle over Noah )

The waters are mostly digital now; no humans were killed in the making of this Noah . But Aronofsky, emboldened by the $330 million worldwide box-office take of his last film, Black Swan , took some huge artistic and canonical gambles with this dead-serious, borderline-delirious movie. (So did Paramount Pictures and the movie’s other backers; Noah cost about $130 million to produce.) Sampling from the Old Testament and its apocrypha, plus bits of The Whole Earth Catalog , the director has hatched his most daring film since the 2006 The Fountain , a sadly underappreciated work that imagined the world’s violent past and utopian future through the eyes of a man (Hugh Jackman) trying to find a cure for his wife’s spreading cancer.

Noah is about a man whose mission is to obliterate Earth’s past and godfather its future. Replacing the word God with Creator and taking other scriptural liberties, the movie risks confusing those who don’t take the Bible literally and alienating those who do. The movie has been banned in several Muslim countries, including Indonesia , Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates . In the West, it has won some converts. Crowe and the Noah team secured an audience with Pope Francis , and an urgent campaign from Paramount brought a flock of evangelicals aboard Aronofsky’s ark.

(READ: Religious leaders give their blessing to Noah )

That’s a coup in itself, for Noah recasts the first doomsday story as the first climate-change tale — a disaster-movie scenario that could soon recur. For the Old Testament God, simply insert nature’s God (the Founding Fathers’ name for the Creator) and see the flood as a predictor for nature’s rebuking modern industry for polluting and overheating the atmosphere. Scientists predict that within decades most of the world’s coastal cities will be underwater if emissions are not drastically curtailed. Aronofsky’s text, disguised as a fable, is a warning of this inconvenient truth . He might be paraphrasing the old spiritual: “No more fire, the flood this time.”

In Aronofsky’s Bible-era setting for this toxic environment, Noah is a survivalist taking revenge on urban iniquity. Seeing the industrialized cities around him as wicked for their destruction of the environment as much as their sensual excesses, Noah assumes power of life and death over all living things. This fable of early man is The Croods with a Mensa IQ — and when the rabble storms the ark, it’s a home-invasion thriller of a family taking refuge in their divine-fallout shelter. As the unsaved hordes climb the hulls of the boat like zombies scaling the Jerusalem walls in World War Z , our hero fights to keep them out. It’s the end of the world as they know it, and he feels fine: Apocalypse Noah.

(READ: TIME’s reviews of The Croods and World War Z )

In the Genesis version, God does all the talking; Noah is his silent servant and enabler. But in the gospel according to Aronofsky and co-screenwriter Ari Handel, the Lord doesn’t boom basso profundo or soothe in Morgan Freeman’s baritone. Indeed, he speaks not in words at all but in visions that might be dreams aided by hallucinogens. The Aronofsky Israel is a land of magic, where rock giants that were once men (the Nephilim) stride the earth, where trees instantly bloom around Noah to provide wood for the ark and where animals flock to the building site as if from supernatural bidding. (Once inside, they are sedated so as not to devour one another.) In this mythic realm, Noah’s trance-revelation — of being submerged as creatures swim past him toward a boat on the surface — has to be the Creator’s command to build the ark. “Fire consumes, water cleanses,” Noah says. “He destroys all, but only to start again.”

To buttress the biblical recounting, Aronofsky imports elements of fantasy literature — the Nephilim, the stone-man Watchers, similar to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Ents, who help Noah construct the ark and fend off invaders — and Shakespearean tragedy. From Genesis 4 the movie borrows the character of Tubal-Cain, “the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron.” (Called the King of the Nephilim in the 1928 Noah’s Ark , he nearly succeeds in stowing away on the boat — a plot device Aronofsky expands on.) Here, as played by the fiercely swaggering Ray Winstone, Tubal-Cain is not only the thug chieftain of the city sinners, leading the charge on the ark, but also the man Noah saw kill his own father. One of his sons is Ham, but Noah’s true spiritual kin is Hamlet.

Ransacking genres far and wide, Aronofsky also samples art-film cosmology. He recapitulates the first chapters of Genesis (Noah was just the ninth generation after Adam) with quick images of a snake and an apple that pulses like a human heart, and when Noah briefly doubts his mission, he sees himself in reptilian form, as if he were in danger of becoming his own evil-twin snake. Aronofsky’s visual summary of the world’s creation, a story that Noah tells his sons, is like the 17-min. history of the universe in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life retold in a minute or two, but no less imposingly oneiric.

(READ: Corliss on The Tree of Life at Cannes and beyond )

This Noah is not a genial Doctor Dolittle. Burdened by his foreknowledge of the flood and its consequences, he’s in no mood to talk with the animals. Even in the early scenes, he’s more herbalist than PETA activist. He is sobered by the realization that his awful task is to save his family — wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly, who won an Oscar as Crowe’s wife in A Beautiful Mind ), sons Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman) and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll) and Shem’s betrothed Ila (Emma Watson) — while letting everyone else die. Naameh and the rest realize that too. They respect Noah’s leadership even as they must question some of his decisions.

ACTUAL SPOILER ALERT: Once devoted to replenishing the earth with his children’s spawn, Noah now accepts his and the world’s mortality. “Everything that was beautiful, everything that was good, we shattered,” he says, proclaiming, “We will work, complete our task and die with the rest.” Naameh is past child-bearing age, and Ila was rendered barren from a beating she endured as a child. Noah is disturbed when he learns that his grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins) has laid a shaman’s hands on the girl and restored her fertility.

(SEE: The trailer for Noah )

In the movie’s two most intimate and shocking sequences, Noah keeps Ham from saving Na’el (Madison Davenport), a sweet refugee from Tubal-Cain’s land, and bringing her on the ark as his bride. He then tells the pregnant Ila that if she bears a daughter, he will kill the newborn. He has become the angry Old Testament God who ordered Abraham to slay his son Isaac before calling off the sacrifice. Apparently the Almighty’s genocidal impulse in his flood scheme is contagious; it has spread to a man who has an even more severe view of humanity, deeming it unworthy of a do-over.

In the 1967 comedy Bedazzled , when Peter Cook as the devil boasts of his satanic powers, Dudley Moore as a modern Faust shouts, “You’re a bleedin’ nutcase!” “They said the same of Jesus Christ,” Cook protests, and Moore retorts, “They said it of a lot of nutcases too.” The very pertinent question in Noah is whether its hero is God’s chosen or a nutcase. Is he a visionary or just seeing things? Methuselah has told his grandson, “You must trust that he speaks in a way that you can understand,” so viewers are encouraged to take on faith Noah’s decision to build the ark. Later, when he must rely not on the whispers of the deity but on his own fallible resources, he may be only a willful man — a beautiful mind — driven toward fatal delusion. END SPOILER ALERT.

(SEE: Seven other movies based on the Bible )

In this Old Testament passion play, the director seemingly had the same influence on his actors that the Creator did on Noah. Along with Crowe, giving his strongest performance in years, they rise to meet Aronofsky’s ferocious commitment. Connelly, who looks as if she had been hewn from flint, is the voice of reason, the heart of besieged humanity. Watson reveals a mature intensity far beyond Harry Potter ‘s Hermione; her tears could be mankind’s own keening elegy. Hopkins, the one jolly soul in the family, is a sage from an earlier age — the mesmerist as optimist. And Winstone, representing all that is wily and rapacious, works from an animosity toward a God that will speak to the ark builder but not to him.

As Noah threatens to go off the rails, so does Noah . But that’s inspiring too: proof of a grownup artist struggling with big issues, and then resolving them to create a crazy-great statement that is also a superb entertainment. In its grand recklessness the movie is closest to Aronofsky’s debut feature, the 1998 Pi , in which Max Cohen, a neurotic mathematician, gets mixed up with a Hassidic sect that believes the string of numbers Max has discovered is a secret code sent by God. That movie cost $60,000, this one about 2,000 times as much. But both films live by Max’s creed: “I’m on the edge, and that’s where it happens.”

(SEE: Corliss’s review of ᴨ , aka Pi )

Big-time directors and the studios that bankroll them prefer to dwell in the comfortable, familiar center, where mammon is God and the only divine word comes from focus groups. So for Aronofsky to construct an expensive spectacle, and to throw liturgical and dramatic challenges like lightning bolts at every member of the audience, is hardly less an achievement than to build and float an ark 300 cubits long (450 ft., or 137 m). Rarely has a film that flirts this solemnly with ambition bending toward madness been so masterly in carrying its spectators to its heights and through its depths. On both levels, Noah is a water thrill ride worth taking.

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SDG Reviews ‘Noah’

Rocking the boat: The first major big-studio Bible film in decades is a provocative take on the venerable story of the Flood.

Darren Aronofsky’s Noah pays its source material a rare compliment: It takes Genesis seriously as a landmark of world literature and ancient moral reflection, and a worthy source of artistic inspiration in our day.

It is not a “Bible movie” in the usual sense, with all the story beats predetermined by the text, and actors in ancient Near Eastern couture hitting their marks and saying all the expected things. It is something more vital, surprising and confounding: a work of art and imagination that makes this most familiar of tales strange and new: at times illuminating the text, at times stretching it to the breaking point, at times inviting cross-examination and critique.

For many pious moviegoers, I suspect some of the film’s more provocative flourishes will be a bridge too far. Less pious viewers, meanwhile, may be put off by the biblical subject matter. Have Aronofsky (raised with a Jewish education) and co-writer Ari Handel made a film that’s too religious for secular viewers and too secular for religious ones? Who is the audience?

Well, I am, to begin with. For a lifelong Bible geek and lover of movie-making and storytelling like me, Noah is a rare gift: a blend of epic spectacle, startling character drama and creative reworking of Scripture and other ancient Jewish and rabbinic writings. It’s a movie with much to look at, much to think about and much to feel; a movie to argue about, and argue with.

It’s certainly not the picture-book story that most of us grow up with, all cheerful ark-building, adorable animals and a gravely pious, white-bearded protagonist. Noah, played by a flinty, authoritative Russell Crowe, is the hero, but that doesn’t make him saintly. Or, if he is saintly, it’s worth recalling that some of the saints could be off-putting, harsh, even ruthless. We want our heroes to be paragons of virtue and enlightenment. Yet when you get down to it, the difference between Moses or David and corrupt Hophni and Phineas is one of degree, not kind. We are all made of the same fallen stuff.

For millennia, Judeo-Christian imagination has been haunted by the idea of the primordial world before the Flood: a world so close to paradise, with Eden itself around some forbidden corner, guarded by cherubim with a flaming sword. Men lived many hundreds of years, Genesis tells us, and chapter 6 suggests that giants walked the earth — offspring, on one interpretation, of human women and fallen angelic beings.

Some of these motifs inspired elements in J.R.R. Tolkien’s tales of the earlier ages of Middle-Earth, an imaginative portrait of the primeval world. Tolkien’s best-known works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , resound with echoes of this lost world. Aronofsky’s Noah includes imaginative flourishes akin to Tolkien: grim portents, grotesque Entish creatures called Watchers, battles in a Mordor-like blasted waste and a dark family struggle not unlike that of Denethor and his sons.

Yet the story’s biblical framework is taken seriously, even literally. There are glimpses of Eden, Adam and Eve in glory, the serpent, the forbidden fruit and the crime of Cain. Though paradise is lost, the Earth has not yet forgotten it, as Tolkien’s rocks and woods remembered the elves after they had gone. In a key sequence, an echo of Eden bursts forth in a rapturous effect recalling Genesis 2:9–10 .

Among the highlights is a recounting of the week of creation, not in a prologue, but strategically positioned at a key moment when characters have reason to look back. This soaring sequence, in which the six days are artfully dovetailed with imagery of the origins of the cosmos and life on earth that would be at home in a nature documentary, is, for me, the film’s theological pinnacle.

We meet venerable Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins), Noah’s great-grandfather, who seems to carry some vestige of Adam’s Edenic glory and preternatural power. In Genesis, a patriarch’s blessing was a potent thing; here, there is something almost wizardly about Methuselah, whom even the Watchers call “the old one.” There are hints, too, of what will be after the deluge, notably the Tower of Babel, in the proud boast of the film’s embodiment of human corruption, tyrannical Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone): “Men united are invincible!”

This poses a dilemma for the story of the flood and for Noah. God sent the flood to wipe out human wickedness. Yet after the flood human wickedness immediately reasserts itself. It’s as if the flood accomplished nothing — or, alternatively, as if allowing Noah’s family to continue and replenish the Earth defeated the purpose.

Noah feels deeply the Creator’s grief and wrath over sin and violence — far more deeply than he feels his mercy or love of mankind. The Creator speaks to Noah, not in a voice from heaven, but in visions and portents, and at times Noah’s understanding of the Creator’s will may be deeply, even shockingly, flawed.

Noah presents biblical characters facing challenges, dilemmas and uncertainties as knotty as those we face today. Compared to figures in most ancient dramas, they are both more recognizably human, yet also more persuasively other . I appreciate a costume drama being willing to let the characters’ milieu push back on audience expectations with cultural sensibilities different from ours.

If it seems hard to imagine Moses or David contemplating some of the choices Noah makes, recall Moses’ horrific response to the worship of the golden calf. Consider, also, that Moses and David, living later in salvation history, had more to go on: Noah’s God had not brought his people out of Egypt, revealed his name at the burning bush or spoken to Abraham on Mount Moriah, commanding him to spare the son Abraham was willing to slay in obedience to God.

Although Noah’s domestic conflict centers initially around middle-son Ham, it’s the women in Noah’s life — his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly) and daughter-in-law Ila (Emma Watson), the wife of son Shem (Douglas Booth) — who ultimately take center stage. Yet the story’s ethos is frankly patriarchal; Noah’s word is law for his family, and even venerable Methuselah upholds Noah’s sole right to choose the path for his family and for the whole human race. Still, both women are strong, vivid characters, and their strongest scenes brought tears to my eyes.

As the drama plays out, it looks as if the story might have muddled the count of characters at the center of the story, one way or another. In the end, though, the filmmakers can claim to have satisfied the text — just barely. Will that be enough to satisfy religious viewers? That may be the most debated question about the film.

What about pre-release concerns that Noah would be rife with themes of environmentalism and overpopulation? Thankfully, overpopulation concerns (which would undermine the biblical text’s critique of other ancient Near Eastern flood-type stories) are a non-issue, and the biblical theme of “Be fruitful and multiply” is affirmed. There’s a definite environmental slant, at times heavy-handed, that is still broadly consistent with the biblical principle that “In the beginning, God entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind to take care of them” ( Catechism of the Catholic Church , 2402 ).

I could easily write an essay just on Aronofky’s Watchers and the film’s reworking of Genesis 6 and the Books of Enoch and Jubilees. (I don’t want to write a review of this film — I want to write a commentary.) The film’s Watchers are creatures of heaven and earth, beings of light bound in rock, with six misshapen, rocky limbs corresponding to the six wings of the seraphim.

The Book of Enoch describes both good Watchers, or angels, and rebels, who offered human beings advanced technological and occult knowledge, perpetuating human decadence. These Watchers are seemingly of this ilk, and the knowledge they transmitted to Cain’s descendants leads to an antediluvian civilization spreading corruption across the face of the Earth.

The film’s division between the wicked civilization of Cain and the righteous line of Seth corresponds to the other interpretation of that strange verse in Genesis 6 about the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men”: On this reading, these are not angels and human women, but sons of Seth led astray by daughters of Cain. Noah borrows from both readings, so whichever you prefer, it’s got you covered.

Theological correctness is not an absolute necessity for movie angels (think of It’s a Wonderful Life ), but some might wonder whether the film’s morally shaded depiction of the Watchers borders on sympathy for the devil. I prefer to think of it another way. The satanic presence in Noah is the serpent in the garden, who has no ties to the Watchers. They are best thought of, it seems to me, as a fictional class of semi-fallen angels, estranged from the Creator but not wholly corrupted.

The serpent is connected with one of the film’s odder bits: a snakeskin, shed in Eden by the serpent, preserved as a family heirloom by the righteous line of Seth and passed down to Noah by his father. Doesn’t the snakeskin represent evil? Not necessarily. The serpent was created good and then shed that goodness to become the tempter. The skin it wore when God created it is not a token of evil, but of original goodness — and thus a true relic of paradise and a token that evil is always a corruption of goodness, never a thing unto itself.

My main theological quarrel with Noah , and it’s an important one, is nothing the filmmakers put in, but something they left out: Genesis’ clear vision of mankind as the pinnacle of God’s creative work. In Genesis 1, it is only after God creates man in his image that we get the summary benediction, “God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

Noah’s retelling alters this, with a ringing summary benediction of the glory and balance of creation (“a jewel in the Creator’s hand”) coming before the creation of man. This gives man an ambiguous status in the narrative — particularly since Noah omits the words “in his image.”

Fortunately, Noah does ultimately affirm the imago Dei , as does his father Lamech at the outset. When the heroes talk about man being in God’s image, it’s always immediately tied to responsibility for creation. There’s an implicit naturalism side-by-side with the film’s religious elements. Only wicked Tubal-cain seems really persuaded of the “greatness” of man; only he uses (or misuses) the biblical language of “subduing” and “dominion” to justify his rapacious ways.

Yet Tubal-cain also echoes the serpent in the garden, comparing himself to God in having power over life and death. “A man isn’t ruled by the heavens,” he says, “a man is ruled by his will.” Noah, meanwhile, says, “Strength comes from the Creator.” There is a challenge to the secular mindset that, in context, is more resonant than standard Bible-movie pieties.

Aronofsky has been pondering the story of Noah for decades and working on this film for more than 15 years. Somehow he has brought the first major big-studio Bible film in decades to the screen. The work of an uncompromising filmmaker who makes dark, divisive, personal films without concession to audience expectations, it’s an outlier for the genre, to be sure. It’s not often that a movie with giant rock monsters has me pondering ancient and modern cosmologies, rabbinic literature and Tolkien — and also makes me cry.

Read more:  Interview: Noah Writer-Director Darren Aronofsky and Co-Writer Ari Handel The ‘Noah’ Movie Controversies: Questions and Answers

Steven D. Greydanus is the Register’s film critic and creator of Decent Films. He is studying for the permanent diaconate for the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey. Follow him on Twitter .

Caveat Spectator: Action violence and battle mayhem; disturbing images; a childbirth scene (nothing explicit); brief sensuality; fleeting rear nudity (a brief, distant shot of a nude man lying face down); theological ambiguities requiring critical thought. Might be fine for thoughtful, mature teens.

Steven D. Greydanus

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Movie Review: ‘Silence of the Lambs’ keeps movie fans looking over their shoulders

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“The Silence of the Lambs” (1991) actors from left are Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster and Scott Glenn. IMDB photo

Why, after all these years, have we never forgotten one of the darkest villains in movie history?

Here is “Silence of the Lambs” again, after opening with little fanfare on Feb. 14, 1991, and grossing $14 million to become the number one film in box offices across the country. Anthony Hopkins quietly put his debonair stamp on the role of Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a character who invades our nightmares right up to this day.

Thirty-three years later, as this reviewer sits here on a dark August morning, a man in a white suit and Panama hat saunters down the street partially seen between the trees.

Or did I imagine seeing him? And why did a chill creep through my sweater?

That is the power with which director Jonathan Demme, working from the novel by Thomas Harris and Ted Tally’s script, keeps old movie fans looking over their shoulders whenever Anthony Hopkins (who usually only pops up on our screens in benign, comic and elderly roles far removed from this flesh-eating, well-dressed character) appears.

Even as an elderly Pope in “The Two Popes,” when he turns and smiles at the camera we grip our rosaries. All of the power of this great actor, with only 28 minutes on screen in this film, went into his bevy of other characters. Advertisement

And then there is Jodie Foster, who started her career as a child. As Clarice Starling, a crisp, new FBI agent, walks down the stone hall of a jail for the criminal insane to interview Dr. Lecter, who sits behind thick protective glass, we walk with her, still gripping the arms of our chairs.

Foster, who has floated though a splendid 50-year career, sits there with notebook in hand, asking questions with a throat full of phlegm and fully protected. We still, to this day, jump back when Dr. Lecter makes a simple move, and move back from our chairs. That, after more than 30 years, shows us the power of these two actors facing each other through panels of glass.

And then there are the phone calls, and the scene in the dark basement of “Buffalo Bill’s” (a terrifying Ted Levine) basement where Clarice walks to the pulse of the Howard Shores score and Tak Fujimoto’s camera-swallowing darkness.

You can watch “Silence of the Lambs” on your television in the safety of your living room, or sit in the enormous darkness of Waterville’s Maine Film Center, where it opens Aug. 23 for one week, and keep looking over your shoulder.

J.P. Devine  of Waterville is a former stage and screen actor.

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Common Sense Media Review

Dark biblical tale is brutal, violent, gory.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this epic tale from director Darren Aronofsky ( Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream ) takes on a character of biblical proportions, Noah. As befits the mayhem recounted in the bible, Noah is filled with catastrophe. The skies rain down from the heavens, drowning nearly everything,…

Why Age 15+?

The violence is epic, bloody, and sometimes gory. Enemies club, stone, stab, or

Some passionate kissing. Allusions to needing to bed people of the opposite sex

"Damned" is as salty as it gets.

A man drinks a brew that brings on visions. It's not clear what it is. Later

Any Positive Content?

Faith guides you where you need to go, but as a human, you also have the power o

Noah is a man of deep faith, so deep he's prepared to do anything that God r

Violence & Scariness

The violence is epic, bloody, and sometimes gory. Enemies club, stone, stab, or spear each other to death. A few scenes show mass graves, underwater and on dry land. Corpses are shown close up, some without limbs. A character threatens to kill babies. Humans resort to violence in a fight to stay alive. Lots of destruction shown from flooding, as well as fires and battles.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Some passionate kissing. Allusions to needing to bed people of the opposite sex in order to procreate.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A man drinks a brew that brings on visions. It's not clear what it is. Later he's shown what appears to be a substance that makes him drunk.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Faith guides you where you need to go, but as a human, you also have the power of choice. Man's connection to and responsibility toward the environment is also a theme.

Positive Role Models

Noah is a man of deep faith, so deep he's prepared to do anything that God requests. His wife Naameh is devoted to Noah and their family. But they're not depicted as perfect. In fact, they struggle with their humanity.

Parents need to know that this epic tale from director Darren Aronofsky ( Black Swan , Requiem for a Dream ) takes on a character of biblical proportions, Noah. As befits the mayhem recounted in the bible, Noah is filled with catastrophe. The skies rain down from the heavens, drowning nearly everything, and humans are nearly feral as they battle each other for survival. There's no real swearing, just the word "damned," but plenty of brutality and gore: mountains of dead bodies are shown, sometimes close up, humans beat each other to death, sometimes with rocks, knives and spears. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (34)
• Kids say (52)

Based on 34 parent reviews

Don’t Waste Your Time With This

What's the story.

Russell Crowe plays Noah, a descendant from the line of Seth, son of Adam and Eve, who's beset by visions that reveal God's plan for the future: a devastating flood that will wipe out humans and help the remaining beings, including a pair of each animal roaming the earth, start over. But first he must build an ark, one that can withstand the assault of a massive flood, as well as the humans who want a place on the ark even if Noah doesn't want them in it. He must also struggle to make real God's plan while balancing his God-given ability to make choices. Meantime, his wife Naameh ( Jennifer Connelly ) and sons Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman), and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll), and adopted daughter Ila ( Emma Watson ), struggle to be by Noah's side, even as they balance their own needs and doubts about Noah's big plan. All this, as Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone) vies with Noah for supremacy -- and the ark.

Is It Any Good?

NOAH is a feat of filmmaking. Every frame, every angle, every shift speaks to the able hands of director Darren Aronofsky. It's a dark and gloomy version of the Biblical tale told here: Noah is tortured -- yes, tortured -- by his visions, not always at peace with the mission God sends his way. Anyone expecting an uplifting version about a man of deep faith heeding his Creator will be disappointed. Yes, Noah heeds. But he does so with plenty of doubts about his and his family's worthiness to survive, a complex and unnerving concept that some young teens may grapple to understand. This Noah doesn't pull its punches.

The film's laden with special effects, most of which is deployed in a way that serves the story. But some audiences may balk at the Watchers, hulking beings made of stone and gifted with Herculean strength that look like they belong in a Star Wars movie, not a Biblical epic. (Also, not sure these beings appear as they do in the Bible's text, one of many parts of the movie that could incite debate.) The film's mid-section feels paunchy and a little plodding, and the music gravitates toward ponderous. All this to say it's imperfect, but its epic sweep and grandeur deserves an audience.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence depicted in this movie. Is it necessary? What's the appeal of watching so much brutality? How else could this story have been told effectively?

Is this a religious movie? Who is the target audience for this film? How can you tell?

Movie Details

• In theaters : March 28, 2014
• On DVD or streaming : July 29, 2014
• Cast : Russell Crowe , Jennifer Connelly , Emma Watson
• Director : Darren Aronofsky
• Studio : Paramount Pictures
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : Brothers and Sisters , History
• Run time : 138 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : violence, disturbing images and brief suggestive content
• Last updated : December 15, 2023

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Noah: Movie Review

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For the first time in cinematic history, the story of Noah comes to the big screen as a feature-length film in Darren Aronofsky's ambitious new release. The Academy Award nominated director and his co-screenwriter Ari Handel take audiences on a dramatic, provocative journey exploring the powerful themes of righteousness, courage, honor, temptation, sacrifice, faithfulness, grace, justice and mercy.

Noah takes on the momentous task of showing the Bible story when a man of faith obeyed God's command to build a boat before an apocalyptic flood covered the earth. Oscar winner Russell Crowe takes the lead as Noah, with Jennifer Connelly ( A Beautiful Mind ), Ray Winstone ( The Departed ), Emma Watson ( Harry Potter series) and Sir Anthony Hopkins ( The Silence of the Lambs ) in supporting roles.

This full-scale, visually epic presentation of Noah flashbacks to Creation and the fall of man, which ultimately leads to utter wickedness in the hearts of almost all of the earth's inhabitants. The state of humanity grieves God and in a series of artistic dreams, God reveals His plan to Noah. Aronofsky presents these plot points using his signature style of storytelling as he builds up to the devastation of the Great Flood. The film appropriately gives an authentic view of the events through the eyes of a mere man. The detailed representation of the ark and the beauty of God's creation are enchanting and wonderful.

Noah contains scenes of graphic violence and implied instances of sexual abuse. For these reasons and more (including a far shot of drunkenness and partial nudity), Noah is not recommended for children. The PG-13 rating of the film is warranted.

Though the film is full of visually compelling action and high intensity drama, some scenes do drag, prolonging the movement of the plot.

(Spoiler alert) It is noteworthy to mention that there are some surprises that could be a distraction for some audiences. Nephilim ("the Watchers"), though referenced in the Bible and other extra biblical sources, are not often associated with the Noah story, at least the Sunday School version most of us know. Their inclusion could cause some to disengage from these characters. Please know that this movie is not a reenactment of the biblical account, but one unique, cinematic take on the story. The filmmakers used the Jewish Midrash and the Book of Enoch as "extra" resources.

The overall presentation and artistry of Aronofsky's Noah is awe-inspiring. Its fluidity and attention to detail help to carry the plot through the story's end. The character development is provocative and humanizing, setting up introspective questions about justice, mercy, good, and evil. Noah affirms the biblical account found in the book of Genesis, Creation, man's original sin as the result of Adam and Eve, and the resulting wickedness in man that provoked the heart of God to release judgment. Scenes like these have never been seen on screen or depicted with such credibility.

Reminiscent of Gladiator and Braveheart , Noah has intense action and adventure sequences and heroic moments that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Crowe is a very believable Noah, revealing aspects of God's heart in various points in the film. The performances by the entire cast are riveting, engaging audiences to experience the emotions and traumatic, yet adventurous, journey of Noah and his family.

Though Aronofsky's interpretation of this Bible story is misguided and shrouded in controversy, Noah is a cinematic spectacle. Sadly, it is a film that rates high in the craft of movie making but completely misses the mark on facts. The faith community will be highly disappointed in Aronofsky's inability to convert Biblical truths into onscreen movie magic.

On a positive note, it is a movie that acknowledges Creation, reveals the sin nature of mankind, shows God's judgment, but most importantly illuminates His mercy.

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40 Days and Nights (2012) is a disaster film of biblical proportions. It features two main characters, John and Tessa, who are a part of a military team tasked with creating arks for the survival of humanity against a fast-growing storm that is covering the planet in water through tsunamis created by shifts in the tectonic plate. In order to avoid a colossal extinction, Tessa needs to collect the essential plant and animal life samples and place them on the ark, while John needs to figure out a way to engineer the ship itself to work properly before they all perish.

This film closely relates to the age-old story of Noah's Ark, except with a modern twist. Noah's Ark is the vessel from the Hebrew Book of Genesis. It depicts God's wrath at humankind and his attempt to wash away their sins, sparring only Noah and his family, as well as a pair of each kind of animal, a male and a female. There are a few similarities, painting 40 Days and Nights as a modern version.

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40 Days and Nights' Ark Is a Floating City

The ark in 40 Days and Nights is shown several times before it ever floats above the water's surface . It's long and very large, with multiple layers potentially housing up to 50,000 people and samples of every species of plant and animal on the planet. One can clearly see skyscraper-sized buildings on the top portion of the ship, reaching up to at least 12 stories. Noah's Ark is described as having at least three layers representing the three-part universe (heaven, earth, and the underworld) and having a skylight in the roof.

The Massive Flood Causes Global Devastation

40 Days and Nights ' flood is caused by a massive tectonic shift, creating a storm and tidal waves that rapidly grow until the only things not underwater are mountain tops. The destruction of homes , train tracks, bridges, waterways, and more shows the ferocity of the damage caused by this incident. The account of the flooding in Noah's Ark also tells of a similar occurrence, with the flooding coming and going at a fast rate, eventually stranding the Ark at the peak of a mountain.

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40 Days and Night Makes Room for More Passengers

While the ark made in 40 Days and Nights is meant to house up to at least 50,000 people, they hardly have time to put anyone on the ship at all. In fact, they estimate only 500 passengers, not including the crew. When thinking in terms of population, it is devastating, and humans would now be considered an endangered species. Thankfully, they hear news of other ark ships having survived but have no idea about the headcount. The Book of Genesis only ever officially confirms eight survivors of humanity total, thus making the point that starting over is essential for survival. There is also a factor that human nature comes into play.

Even though everyone's family is at risk or will die due to the flood in 40 Days and Nights , one man tells his girlfriend to seek an ark. He is reprimanded for breaking protocol because it brought disarray and confusion to the base where the ark was stationed. With no word from the base, it is assumed that the ark and everyone there perished until the end of the movie. From the viewpoint of his selfishness, it was a reflection of the same selfishness that God wanted to punish humanity for.

Keeping the construction of the ark, the addition of the samples of various plants and animals, and the passengers who managed to survive, it's easy to see how 40 Days and Nights is a retelling of Noah's Ark.

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Film Review: ‘Noah’

Man builds ark, survives flood, then wonders what it was all for in Darren Aronofsky's long-awaited, hotly debated biblical epic.

By Scott Foundas

Scott Foundas

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Having made movies about obsessive characters looking for God — or something like Him — in the numerology of the Kabbalah (“Pi”), at the end of a heroin needle (“Requiem for a Dream”), and in the outer reaches of the galaxy (“The Fountain”), surely it was only a matter of time before Darren Aronofsky got to making one about a man with a direct line to the Creator. And so we have “Noah,” in which the world’s most famous shipwright becomes neither the Marvel-sized savior suggested by the posters nor the “environmentalist wacko” prophesied by some test-screening Cassandras, but rather a humble servant driven to the edge of madness in his effort to do the Lord’s bidding. Counterintuitive, perhaps, but by no means sacrilegious, Aronofsky’s uneven but undeniably bold, personal, visually extravagant take on the Old Testament tale will surely polarize critics and audiences while riding a high sea of curiosity to strong initial worldwide B.O. Only time — and word of mouth — will tell if it can stay the course for anywhere near 40 days and nights (and top “Black Swan'”s $329 million global cume).

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Whatever comes of “Noah” (which opens this weekend in several foreign markets, including Mexico, a week ahead of its March 28 domestic launch), the film certainly ranks alongside “The Great Gatsby” and “Gravity” as one of the riskiest director-driven passion projects to be gambled on by today’s ever more cautious major studios. And if Aronofsky’s $130 million, 137-minute movie ultimately feels compromised at all, it’s less by studio interference than by its director’s own desire to make a metaphysical head movie that is also an accessible action blockbuster (where “The Fountain” tilted heavily toward the former). “Noah” does not always sit easily astride those competing impulses, but it is never less than fascinating — and sometimes dazzling — in its ambitions. Once upon a time, the famously austere French director Robert Bresson was enlisted by Dino De Laurentiis to film the Noah story for his planned “The Bible … In the Beginning,” only to be fired when he told the producer he didn’t intend to film any of the animals, just their tracks upon the sand. And there may be no better description of Aronofsky’s film than to say that it has one foot in the world of Bresson and the other in that of Jerry Bruckheimer.

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For starters, “Noah” doesn’t look like any biblical epic we’ve ever seen before, with the verdant hillsides and ashen volcanic flatlands of Iceland standing in for the deserts of the Middle East, photographed with rugged grandeur by Aronofsky’s longtime d.p. Matthew Libatique. Likewise, the costumes (by “American Hustle” Oscar nominee Michael Wilkinson) eschew robes and sandals in favor of heartier attire that might best be described as proto-army surplus. As for the supposed “liberties” Aronofsky and co-screenwriter Ari Handel have taken with their sacrosanct source, they aren’t boldfaced transgressions so much as interpretations, additions and embellishments designed to flesh out the spare Noah narrative to feature length. This includes making the characters far younger than those described in the Good Book — which, if followed to the letter, would have yielded an antediluvian “Amour” (another movie, one should note, with a role for a symbolical white dove).

Aronofksy’s Noah (superbly played by Russell Crowe ) doesn’t hear God’s voice booming down from the heavens like in Bill Cosby’s celebrated standup routine, or sit on the stoop shooting the breeze with the Creator like Steve Carell in “Evan Almighty.” Rather, the looming flood and the mission of the ark come to him in the course of two vividly rendered hallucinogenic dreams — one natural, the other induced by some special “tea” served up by Noah’s grandpa, Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins, leaving no bit of scenery unchewed). And because the story lacks a natural antagonist, the film corrals one from elsewhere in Genesis in the form of Tubal-cain (played as a youth by Finn Wittrock), a descendant of the Abel-slaying Cain first seen in a brief prologue delivering a fatal blow to Noah’s father, Lamech (Marton Csokas) — a scene that, like much of “Noah,” feels straight out of a 1940s frontier western. Later, as a full-blown supervillain (Ray Winstone) hip to Noah’s survivalist scheme, Tubal-cain and his rogue army vow to hitch a ride on the ark or else die trying. (This leads to a large-scale battle sequence which, while impressively staged, is easily the film’s most conventional passage — an extended outtake from Middle-earth.)

Here is where you feel Aronofsky and Handel laboring intensely, with only partial success, to turn what has traditionally been something of a one-man show into more of an ensemble affair. Where Noah is the model locavore, who takes from the land only as much as he needs and strives to be at one with his surroundings (but who, being Russell Crowe, can also kick serious butt when need be), Tubal-cain personifies the debauched, resource-plundering wastrels God seeks to smite from the universe. And though Winstone plays the part with sinister flair, the character never becomes much more than a stock bad guy, on hand to pop up like a jack-in-the-box at the least convenient moments, and to try wooing Noah’s petulant, Skywalker-ish son, Ham (Logan Lerman), over to the dark side. Ham, meanwhile, may be patient zero for middle-child syndrome, spending most of the movie sulking about wondering when he’s going to become a man, and staring dolefully at the beautiful Ila (Emma Watson), an orphan girl who was adopted as a child by Noah and his wife, Naameh (a solid but underused Jennifer Connelly), and who becomes betrothed to their eldest son, Shem (Douglas Booth). Even Ila gets her own inner conflict in the form of a barren womb that makes her feel like an unworthy bride — especially, you know, given the pressure of repopulating the earth.

But if the interpersonal dramas don’t quite fully engage, as spectacle “Noah” rarely disappoints, commencing with the building of the ark itself. Designed by production designer Mark Friedberg (and built, to the actual dimensions specified by the Bible, on a New York soundstage), it is an awesome thing — not the traditional sailing vessel of many an artist’s interpretation, but rather an enormous wooden warehouse that makes the Maersk Alabama look like a lifeboat. In its construction, Noah is lent several (huge) helping hands by the Watchers (the film’s version of the biblical Nephilim), fallen angels exiled to earth for their loyalty to mankind and imprisoned inside towering granite bodies that they lug about like walking mountains. Intricately designed and voiced by the likes of Frank Langella, Nick Nolte and regular Aronofsky featured player Mark Margolis, these weary witnesses to all the wonders and horrors of creation are skeptical at first of Noah’s intentions, but eventually rally to his aid, and they become the most special (and emotionally resonant) of the movie’s many elaborate special effects.

The arrival of the animals, which appear to self-organize by phylum, is a similarly marvelous sight (even if the creatures retain a conspicuous CGI appearance). Then comes the Frankenstorm, in which the waters of the earth quite literally rise up to meet those of the heavens — a suitably Dramamine-worthy sequence, expertly rendered by Aronofsky and all his technicians. Not soon to be forgotten: the image of humanity’s last dregs clambering for a foothold on a lone rocky outcropping as it, too, is finally swallowed by the sea.

Yet it is only after the tide has ebbed and a new day has dawned that “Noah” seems to come to its real place of purpose. Taking inspiration from a line in Genesis about Noah’s post-flood descent into drunkenness, Aronofsky and Handel imagine an exhausted hero who can’t understand why, if all mankind was meant to perish, he and his family should be saved. And since that telephone to the heavens only receives calls, Noah has no one to ask. Crowe is incredibly good in these scenes — you feel his torment as if it were a fire burning him from the inside out — culminating in a terrifying moment of near-infanticide that, intentionally or not, recalls James Mason’s explosive lament from Nicholas Ray’s “Bigger Than Life”: “God was wrong!”

The purists will blanche — injections of existential angst and self-doubt into Scripture are always guaranteed to rankle (as “The Last Temptation of Christ” proved). But it’s here that one feels fully why Aronofsky wanted to make this movie in the first place, as Noah’s own age of anxiety seems to echo directly into our own. The movie leaves us with a crystalline image of a man who feels most adrift when he is finally standing on dry land — and who, regardless of what faith one subscribes to, cannot relate to that?

For all its visual flourishes, “Noah” offers an equally dynamic sonic experience, with immersive, multilayered effects designed to take full advantage of the new Dolby Atmos sound system, and a richly orchestrated score by regular Aronofsky music man Clint Mansell that alternates thunderous percussive beats with New Age-y twangs and hums.

Reviewed at Paramount screening room, New York, March 10, 2014. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 137 MIN. 

• Production: A Paramount release presented with Regency Enterprises of a Protozoa Pictures production. Produced by Scott Franklin, Darren Aronofsky, Mary Parent, Arnon Milchan. Executive producers, Ari Handel, Chris Brigham. Co-producers, Amy Herman, Cale Boyter.
• Crew: Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Screenplay, Aronofsky, Ari Handel. Camera (color, 35mm), Matthew Libatique; editor, Andrew Weisblum; music, Clint Mansell; production designer, Mark Friedberg; supervising art director, Dan Webster; set decorator, Debra Schutt; costume designer, Michael Wilkinson; sound (Datasat/Dolby Atmos), Ken Ishii; supervising sound editor, Craig Henighan; re-recording mixers, Skip Lievsay, Craig Henighan; visual effects supervisor, Ben Snow; visual effects producer, Andrew Fowler; visual effects and animation, Industrial Light & Magic; visual effects, Look Effects, Inc., Technicolor, Mr. X Gotham; special effects supervisor, Burt Dalton; makeup effects and creature design, Adrien Morot; stunt coordinators, George Aguilar, Douglas Crosby; assistant director, Richard Graves; second unit director, George Aguilar; second unit camera, Lukasz Jogalla; casting, Mary Vernieu, Lindsay Graham.
• With: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Douglas Booth, Nick Nolte, Mark Margolis, Kevin Durand, Leo McHugh Carroll, Marton Csokas, Finn Wittrock, Madison Davenport, Gavin Casalegno, Nolan Gross, Skylar Burke, Dakota Goyo, Frank Langella.

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‘Noah’ Review: 40 Odd Days Of Incest

Noah Is A Bloated, Beautiful Mess (Like Russell Crowe)

Noah isn’t for everyone, but it’s a perfect movie for those of us who believe obsession is a certain kind of genius. Darren Aronofsky’s obsession? His impossible task? Making sense of the Bible. Noah’s story is simple enough if you leave out the details, which I imagine many true believers would suggest that you do. Plot holes? Story doesn’t track? That’s where faith comes in! (I do remember some bits of church from childhood). God tells Noah to build a boat, Noah builds it, everyone else sucks so they die, and Noah lives happily ever after, the end. Epilogue: 6,000 years of incest, then you.

Aronofsky seems to want to believe the story, but as a storyteller himself, he can’t let go of the details. Exactly how did God speak to Noah, and how often? Did Noah resent God for leaving him to separate righteous from wicked, or did he get a bit of a God complex himself? When he saw the sinners raping each other, did he want to save the rapees or did he just say screw it all and take off in his boat?

To watch Noah is to see Darren Aronofsky earnestly trying to resolve these thorny questions, to flesh out a Bible story that doesn’t necessarily make a ton of sense in the original version. To make it work in a way that’s true for him. To understand an Old Testament God who, as written, might’ve been kind of an asshole (note: I learned this mostly from an old Lewis Black bit). It’s a movie that posits the profound hypothesis that maybe mankind is forever cursed to destroy God’s creations because of our irrational love of our own progeny. That’s a pretty heavy thought, and to see it come from a movie full of prehistoric hoodies, pregnancy tests performed using a magic leaf, and CGI rock people voiced by Nick Nolte, is completely, righteously, gloriously f*cking insane. It’s spectacle at its best. Silly, but silly in the way that the universe is profoundly silly. And let’s be honest, Nick Nolte was born to voice a rock person.

Noah is such a magnificent whatsit that Paramount has no idea what to do with it. They screened it at a last-minute showing (usually these things are decided weeks in advance) held at 11 am, two days before the release. A sure sign that they were either terrified of what people might write about it or just couldn’t make a decision about how to sell it. I think the studio heads, possibly in a fit of cocaine-induced optimism, thought they were getting a big budget action movie where Noah would growl “GET OFF MY BOAT!” like Harrison Ford in Air Force One applied to some Biblical terrorist (Ark Force One?). And that, because it was a Bible story, flyover state pastors would funnel their shit-kicking congregants in by the bus load to see it. Instead, they got moral complexity and a “hero” who looks like he might end up murdering his own family. Most action movies paint the protagonist’s single-minded quest to protect his family as the ultimate virtue. What Noah presupposes is, what it if isn’t? In fact, what if it putting your children above all else was actually the root of all sin? Instead of a movie about the word of God, they got one man’s big budget manic episode that only just manages to find a messy sort of closure at the end of three hours. I love that.

Noah begins like that Biblical action movie. Noah and his family are the last of the righteous, hemmed in on all sides by the murderous descendants of Cain, led by Ray Winstone, who kills Noah’s father over a snake skin and runs a network of mining towns dedicated to raping the Earth of its minerals and women of their virtue. Meanwhile, Noah’s family are vegetarians, living off the fat of the land, away from the sinful cities. One day, a sort of baby deer/armadillo-looking animal with an arrowhead stuck in its side runs into Noah’s camp, and Noah tries to save it from the evil hunters. They attack him, but he channels his righteousness into skull crunching punches and deadly kicks. One hunter lies broken on the ground, helpless, demanding of Noah (reasonably so, really), “What do you want ?”

“Justice,” growls Noah Crowe. The scene cuts to black, leaving it up to our imaginations whether Noah ended up murdering that last guy in cold blood, to say nothing of how he might’ve managed to grow so meat pie stout and lager bloated on a vegan diet of berries and asskicking.

From there, Noah has a vision of the flood, and takes his sons with him up to the mountain to seek guidance from his grandfather, Methuselah, played by Anthony Hopkins (who, according to movies, is the father of all deities and important people). Methuselah asks his great grandson what he likes best in life, and rather than answer “to crush my enemies, to see them driven before me, to hear the lamentations of their women,” the innocent tyke says “berries.” Methuselah strokes his beard and agrees that, yes, berries are totally bitchin, and proceeds to spend the rest of the movie doing nothing but foraging for berries. The first shot after the flood? Noah, picking some goddamned berries. I swear, this entire movie is just propaganda for Big Berry.

But before that, Methuselah gets Noah messed up on peyote tea to help him better understand the word of God, which spurs Noah to build his ark, with help from the giant rock people (don’t ask). Noah plants some magic God beans, and the Earth spouts geysers and a great forest with which to build the ark. Noah and the rock people set to work building, but before long, Ray Winstone and company find them, and set up a rival camp in the forest, where they spend their days raping each other and tearing God’s creatures limb from limb and eating them raw. At one point, a guy actually trades a goat-thing for a young girl. Berries for the righteous, rape-meat for the sinners, seems to be the message here.

I do think Aronofsky could’ve gotten a little more creative with the kinds of animals the rapists slaughtered for food, as every animal that didn’t make it on the ark becomes a handy explanation for why it doesn’t exist anymore. Oh dang, now they’re eating the centaurs, and so forth.

Also, either Noah’s three sons are going to have to find wives amongst the rape camp or there’s going to be a loooot of incest going on in the post-flood world. Aronofsky doesn’t shy away from any of these niggling details, but instead sort of follows them to their logical conclusions, which of course aren’t very logical at all. The movie is a big mess in the third act. How could it not be? The mess is the beauty of it. (One question that’s never addressed, why is everyone white? Did black people come later? Wouldn’t Noah have to have had a few black wives or kids? Some questions about this story are simply impossible to answer).

It stumbles in a few places, to be sure – I’ve never been able to see Emma Watson as anything but “Emma Watson acting”, perhaps this is a personal problem – but, almost miraculously, it comes to a somewhat touching conclusion. That our stupid love of our offspring is both our undoing and what makes us human. There’s more than a little Rust Cohle in this Noah.

There’s a subplot about Ham (by which I refer to Noah’s son, played by Logan Lerman, not Russell Crowe’s favorite garnish) that doesn’t quite make sense. But honestly, have you ever read anything about Ham ? Ham’s offspring were apparently cursed, either because he walked in on his naked, drunk dad, or because he walked in on his naked, drunk dad and buttf*cked him, or… something. The true meaning of this story has likely been forever lost in translation, beyond what you make of it yourself. Which, of course, is exactly what Aronofsky has done.

In Noah , Ham walks away saying “Maybe we’ll learn to be kind,” and I don’t know what the hell that story was supposed to mean, but despite its warts and disappointing lack of father sodomy, I thought it was a nice statement. The movie should’ve ended right there.

Vince Mancini is a writer and comedian living in San Francisco. You can find more of his work on FilmDrunk, the Uproxx network, and all over his mom’s refrigerator. Fan FilmDrunk on Facebook , find the latest movie reviews here .

"The Ultimate Survival Story"

What You Need To Know:

(BB, CC, FR, EE, L, VV, S, N, AA, M) Ultimately, by the movie's end, a strong biblical, moral worldview with strong redemptive elements extolling justice, mercy, love, and faith plus a couple scenes of forgiveness retelling the biblical story of Noah and the Ark, but movie inserts some extra-biblical story elements to create a three-act structure with more jeopardy, including a subplot about a group of angels who disobey the “Creator” and help Cain's sinful descendants create “industrialized” cities to despoil the Earth, Noah is more conflicted and falsely interprets the visions God gives him to even consider infanticide, God doesn’t speak directly to Noah but gives Noah visions that Noah must interpret, an environmentalist spin is given to man’s sinfulness and also to the biblical passage of God giving mankind “dominion” over earth's plants, minerals, and animals, but movie shows Great Flood is global, Adam and Eve really existed, the Fall of Man really occurred, the Earth was created in six days, Cain kills Abel, God miraculously acts time and time again, and the story is interpreted as a story of justice, mercy, salvation, and faith; three or four “d” words uttered by main villain, Tubal-cain, a descendant of Cain; strong action violence includes “fallen” angels encrusted with rock club evil people away from the ark, Noah and his sons have to fight some evil men trying to get on the ark, Cain takes a rock in silhouette and starts to bring it down on Abel but impact not shown, little girl has a bloody wound on her belly, Tubal-cain slays Lamech, flood waters sweep people away, some stabbings, young woman gets her ankle caught by a steel trap, a birthing scene, man bites into lizard, gory image of a killed animal, Noah considers infanticide; no sex but some passionate kissing, and it’s vaguely implied Shem has gone off with his female partner (there’s no formal marriage ceremony in the movie, but the times are primitive, with no formal church) and Shem's "wife" becomes pregnant; partial upper male nudity; as in the biblical account Noah becomes drunk; no smoking or drugs but Methuselah gives Noah some “tea,” which seems to give Noah another vision; and, lying, Noah considers infanticide of his daughter-in-law’s progeny because he wrongly thinks God doesn’t want mankind to survive the Great Flood’s aftermath, covetousness, family conflict, and evil leader plans on killing Noah and taking his family.

More Detail:

Paramount and Darren Aronofsky’s NOAH movie about the Great Flood is an epic adventure story, with a nice ending that wraps everything up on a hopeful note. It adheres to the biblical story of God’s creation of the heavens and the earth, the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve, and the basic story of Noah and the Ark. However, it adds some extra-biblical material to create a dramatic three-act structure and adds some modern environmentalist twists in a couple places. Also, God is only called the Creator throughout the movie and doesn’t speak directly to Noah but gives Noah visions that he must interpret. Throughout the story, however, it’s clear Noah and his family are dependent on God’s miracles and, ultimately, His Providence. In the end, the Creator’s justice and mercy prevails, but the relationship and covenant between God and His people isn’t quite as personal as some people of faith might want or as the biblical text shows.

The movie starts with Noah as a young boy being taught the Creation Story by his father, Lamech. Lamech mentions God’s creation of the universe ex nihilo and follows it up with allusions to the Fall of Adam and Eve and Cain murder of Abel. A group of angels called, the Watchers disobey God and help Cain and his descendents industrialize the earth but they have despoiled it. So now the earth has become a barren wasteland, like something out of a MAD MAX movie. For disobeying the Creator, the angels became encrusted with black rock.

Lamech and his son live off the land, but they also have to avoid marauding bands of evil men descended from Cain. Sure enough, three such men, led by a young Tubal-cain, kill Lamech, but Noah escapes.

Years later, Noah is married to Naameh. They have three boys, Shem, Ham, and young Japheth. Noah tells his sons they only use what they need. He gets a vision of the earth being devastated by a giant flood. He decides to consult his grandfather, Methuselah, on what the Creator wants him to do.

Noah takes his family to the mountain where Methuselah lives. Along the way, they find a seriously wounded young girl named Ila, and Noah takes her into the family. Noah’s wife says Ila’s wound will prevent her from having children.

At the mountain, Methuselah gives Noah a seed from the Garden of Eden, and Noah gets a vision that he must build an ark for the animals and his family to survive the flood. Noah plants the seed, which miraculously grows into a massive forest. With help from several of the Watchers, Noah and his sons begin building the ark.

Years pass. When the ark is about halfway built, Tubal-cain suddenly shows up with a small army. He demands to be included in the ark, but Noah says no. The Watchers with Noah prevent Tubal-cain from taking the ark. Tubal-cain vows to return some day with a larger army to defeat the Watchers.

Sure enough, with the floodwaters about to come, Tubal-cain returns. Meanwhile, Shem and Ila have fallen in love, but Ham and Japheth wonder where they will get wives to help re-populate the world. As the rain starts pouring, a final confrontation with Tubal-cain looms. Meanwhile, Ila miraculously becomes pregnant, but Noah decides mankind isn’t fit to live. So, he vows to kill the baby if it’s a girl. Only a miracle can save the day.

NOAH is a spectacular epic with a hopeful, inspiring ending. Although it stumbles along the way, it delivers enough modern spectacle and dramatic conflict to please most moviegoers. Director Darren Arenofsky uses a great deal of metaphor and symbolism to tell the story. The villain, Tubal-cain, is a bit one-dimensional, however, and the movie’s post-apocalyptic vision of the evil world that man has created is a bit derivative of other movies. Also, the invention of the giant angelic “Watchers” encrusted with rock is too reminiscent of the tree Ents in THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

Everything in the movie works toward the hopeful ending, where Noah prayerfully gathers his family for the new beginning after the Great Flood. This ending nicely sets the stage for the covenant God makes with Abraham and his descendants, including the provision God makes for the Hebrew priesthood under Moses.

Although the movie adheres to the basic biblical story of Noah and the Ark, it adds some extra biblical material with changes, twists, and spins, to create a three-act structure and add more jeopardy to the story. Instead of God speaking directly to Noah like in the Bible, the Creator gives visions to Noah that he must interpret. Doing this helps the movie turn Noah into a more conflicted, troubled man. In this way, the movie builds up conflicts between Noah and his family that aren’t in the biblical text. Although this material is extra-biblical, it does give the movie the tension it needs to build more excitement into the final act.

Also, the movie gives an environmentalist spin to the sinfulness of man. It depicts Noah as the first survivalist living off the land. At one point, the movie even seems to undercut Genesis 1:26 in the King James Version of the Bible where God gives man “dominion” over the earth by placing the words in the mouth of the villain. (Many Bible haters and humanist environmentalists like to twist this verse by misinterpreting it to mean that God allows man to pollute and abuse the earth, including the animals.)

Another problem with NOAH is its depiction of the “fallen” group of angels it calls the Watchers. It allows these fallen angels to seek forgiveness from the Creator by helping Noah build and defend the ark. This is not a traditional way of viewing God’s angels. However, to be fair, the movie never shows the Watchers siding with Satan, and Satan doesn’t appear in the movie other than some images of the serpent that tempted Eve. So, it may be argued that the disobedient angelic beings in NOAH are in a different kind of “fallenness” than the angels who sided with Satan.

Finally, the movie never mentions the word God, but only calls God the “Creator.” This may be an attempt to avoid controversy over the name of God, but it doesn’t quite work.

Despite all these problems, NOAH has a lot of positive things going for it. The movie shows that Adam and Eve really existed and that they were in a state of grace before their Temptation and Fall. Young Earth Creationists will be pleased that the movie says God created the earth in six days and seems to be a rather recent creation when Noah appears. The movie also shows that the Great Flood was global. The movie also shows that Cain kills Abel as a result of the Fall. In addition, throughout the movie, the Creator seems to act miraculously time and time again. Finally, the filmmakers interpret the story of Noah as a story of God’s justice and mercy. Thus, in the third act, Noah eventually learns that the Creator is a God of mercy and love as well as justice. It is this revelation that leads to the movie’s hopeful and inspiring ending. That ending includes a spectacular rainbow sent from the Creator. It also includes a nice foreshadowing of some Jewish religious traditions later developed under Moses in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

All in all, therefore, MOVIEGUIDE® advises a light caution for violence, the extra-biblical elements, and some intense moments.

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8 reasons for catholics to see the upcoming noah movie.

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I was invited to attend a screening of the movie Noah on Thursday March 6.  The movie starring Russell Crowe as Noah (and including Jennifer Connelly, Emma Watson, Anthony Hopkins and Ray Winstone) is set to be released on March 28, 2014.  While reviews are embargoed, I wanted to share a few specific thoughts in response to all the chatter out there from people who haven't seen the film.

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There has been some concern expressed in the Christian community due to the fact that the movie is not a literal depiction of the scriptural account of Noah (chapters 5-9 from the Book of Genesis).  There has also been concern expressed about the choices the director and screenwriters made adding details to the account that weren't in Genesis.  For example, how did Noah build an ark that big?  How did Noah react to the death and destruction of all things living in the world outside of the ark?  Did Noah's contemporaries know the floods were going to come and what (if anything) did they do to fight for their lives?  How did 7 pairs of each animal come to be in the ark and stay calm for months on board?

Paramount Pictures, who is distributing the film, responded to these concerns by clarifying on the movie's website and promotional materials, "The film is inspired by the story of Noah. While artistic license has been taken, we believe that this film is true to the essence, values and integrity of a story that is a cornerstone of faith for millions of people worldwide. The biblical story of Noah can be found in the book of Genesis."

I think this is a helpful clarification in case anyone would have assumed that the account would be literal.  For my part, I don't understand why anyone would have assumed that an epic movie could have been done literally only on the material in the Book of Genesis, as the Biblical account wasn't written with the detail or for the purpose of a two-hour screenplay.    Here's why I recommend this film to Catholics:

(1) It inspired me to read the Scriptures again, closely - Preparing to watch the move made me read the chapters in Genesis (5-9) that tell the story of Noah.  I also was moved to reread the chapters after the movie.  Frankly, it had been years since I read these chapters as they are not frequently part of the readings at Sunday Mass.   One of the Catholics I watched the movie with remarked after immediately it that it makes her "want to go back and read the biblical account of Noah."   Any movie that drives people to read the Scriptures once again is a very good thing.

(2) The movie gets the big aspects of Noah's role right.  Noah receives a life-altering task from God and faithfully executes it.  At a human level, the movie provides an interpretation of what this experience must have been like for Noah.  Some Christians will appreciate the interpretation; others might not like the presentation of Noah as conflicted.  It's simply an interpretation.  Any rich telling of this story on the big screen required some artistic license on the question of how did Noah personally cope with this massive task.

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(3) It's great that Hollywood is making big-budget biblically-inspired epic films.   This film cost $125 million to produce.  It has a stellar cast and fantastic visuals.  It is great to go to the movies and see a gripping movie about a key story from the Scriptures.   (4)  The film will spark great conversations.   One of the first words I used to describe the movie was "intense."  After the movie, the small group of us had a fascinating discussion about aspects of the movie.  We wanted to know what others thought and felt.   The movie provokes questions on important topics such as good and evil, life and death, aspects of Noah's life, and how God is present with us in the world.  I am grateful that the Noah movie will do this for viewers.   (5) The Noah movie can foster what Pope Francis calls a culture of encounter.  Specifically because the film isn't a literal, biblical account, because it has a great cast and because it is visually-appealing epic blockbuster, many people that would never describe themselves as religious will be open to seeing it.   Consequently, it allows us to invite those of different faiths and those away from the Christian faith to join us for the movie.  Much good can come from the post-movie discussions.  Hopefully some of those discussions lead those involved to also encounter God in prayer.   (6) The movie should make us more aware of evil and goodness in the world.  Seeing how good and evil is presented in the movie made me consider how both evil and goodness is present in the world today.  In Noah's time, God saw so much evil that he chose Noah to give the human race a new start.  The characters in the movie struggled realistically with the sin, violence and evil within them.  We live in a culture that often chooses to downplay and avoid discussing the effects of sin and evil and the need to promote life-affirming values that lead to virtuous choices and service.  This movie may produce some reflection on this.     (7) The movie makes a strong pro-life stand.  At one of its most pivotal moments, the movie is powerfully pro-life.  Without giving the story away, a character faces a choice to eliminate innocent, defenseless human life or to choose to protect and defend it.  I hope that those who consider themselves "pro-choice" will see that scene and be open to a change in their views.  Unborn girls and boys are vulnerable, voiceless and innocent too.     (8) The movie treats life as an incredible gift from God.   Noah and his family understand the gift that God gave them in letting them live and to being part of God's plan of salvation.  It similarly treats the world and nature as incredible gifts that we must responsibly steward.  These are strong Christian messages.

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