Noah.

Darren Aronofsky has lost his touch! After two consecutively excellent movies, The Wrestler (2008) and Black Swan (2010) we have gone back to the ridiculousness of his confusing romantic drama The Fountain (2006). His latest is deemed a ‘biblical blockbuster’ and is allegedly said to be based on the story of Noah’s Ark found in Genesis chapters 6-9 in which God is said to have saved Noah, his wife, children and a male and female animal of each species from a great flood by instructing him to build a giant ark.

Filmed in Southern Island, Noah (2014) stars Russell Crowe who mopes his way through the role of Noah.  You remember Crowe he was the one who played the all singing Inspector Javert in the dreadful movie adaptation of Les Miserables (2012) well he’s not much better in the role of Gods emissary on earth, barely braking out of that earnest no nonsense look he always seems to carry around no matter what role he plays even when he’s talking to the sky! Jennifer Connelly is Naameh, Noah’s spouse. She has worked with Aronofsky before in Requiem for a Dream (2000). Emma Watson, who I really enjoyed in The Bling Ring last year, plays the daughter in law, Ila while Douglas Booth, who was Pip in the three-part BBC TV adaptation of Charles Dickens Great Expectations, is her husband and the eldest son of Noah. Anthony Hopkins, who can’t seem to land a decent role lately, plays Methuselah with Hackney born Raymond Winstone as the villain of the piece, King Tubal-Cain, who was much better as Jack Regan in last years The Sweeney. The acting is dire, hammy and completely non-convincing with everybody playing them selves - the blame for which must rest firmly with the director.    

So this is what a Tottenham supporter looks like these days?

This sanctimonious nonsense tries to teach us the meaning of life but fails miserable. Certainly not on par with biblical epics like The Ten Commandments (1956) or Ben Hur (1959) although the Aronofsky’s budget was in the region of $125 million - so there’s no real excuse. And where did the stone monsters come from, don’t remember them at Bible study! If you’re really are feeling in need of a little religion may I suggest Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) your find it far more fulfilling than this modern meaningless gobbledygook.

 

The version from my childhood!

I read in the paper this morning that Aronofsky’s film has spawned a series of novel’s including a graphic one, correct me if I’m wrong but I thought that Noah was already based on a book?   

Black Swan

Performing ballet is a very high risk way of earning ones living even excluding the obvious stress and the backstabbing there’s the physical injury to the dancer’s body and like some performance sports you can only “play” for so long. At the heart of Darren Aronofsky sensational fifth movie Black Swan (2010) is Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake where it’s expected that the same dancer would play both the White Swan and the Black Swan. This is the dilemma that confronts Nina Sayers, told by impresario Thomas Leroy that she is obvious choice for the role of the White Swan but her frigid sexual nature precludes her from playing the Black Swan. Nina’s obsession with playing the Swan Queen forces her to go deep into her psyche to discover her inner Black Swan, she begins to experience unknown aspects of her personality all mirrored by this almost gothic world of dance.

On one level it is a terrifying psychological thriller; on another it shows brilliantly the world of the ballerina from inside the mind of one of its performers. A study of insanity and obsession seen through the eyes of a young woman who has a driving ambition but a low self esteem. This superb piece of modern film making stars Natalie Portman as Nina Sayers, who quite rightly won the Oscar for Best Actress at the 83rd Annual Academy Awards in February, the great Paris born actor Vincent Cassel as Thomas Leroy, with Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey and Winona Ryder in major supporting roles.

This film completely blew me away and I seriously think this is the best English language film after Winters Bone (2010) and I’m surprised it did not win Darren Aronofsky the Oscar for Best Director. This sensual and somewhat erotic movie harps back to the ethos of the Thatcher era when success must be achieved at all costs. All of us are flawed and we all have split personalities to some degree which I think is why Aronofsky allows us empathies with the Nina Sayers character even when she plummets to the depths of her own personnel darkness. Powell and Pressburger raised the bar for ballet films with their 1948 masterpiece The Red Shoes but Aronofsky has taken the “bar” out of sight with his best film to date.