The Whale (2022)

"I'm Sorry" (Repeat to ∞)

or

Marked "E" for Effort
 

Darren Aronofsky's latest film— an adaptation of the stage play "The Whale"—sits right in his wheel-house about subject matter, and could, in fact, be a thematic sequel to The Wrestler. Being stage-bound, however, the director does something unusual for him, by limiting it to a single set, and, for the most part, one room, shooting it in the restricting Academy ratio.

 

There's a practical reason for that; the subject of The Whale is Charlie (Brendan Fraser), an online writing course instructor living in Idaho, who is the only one participating in his ZOOM courses "without a working camera". The reason? Charlie is morbidly obese, to the point where he is rooted to his central couch, where he teaches, eats, watches TV (and porn). It's easier to just stay there, set in place, rather than reach for the walker (and the grabber so he doesn't have to bend down) and haul yourself, straining the entire way, in order to be upright and shuffle off to whatever duty needs to be performed. This is the burden he must bear, given how things are...and how he is. Best to restrict what you do to what you CAN do and what you can reach. One must also pre-plan and make sure one is not in a hurry...or the near-occasion of emergency.

But, it's all an emergency. Charlie's health issues are manifold: hypertension, congestive heart failure, and a BP of 238/134—when he looks up those numbers, he is taken to this site, which advises "seek immediate help and call 911." Not to mention the trouble breathing, the danger of choking, lack of oxygen, and a constant nagging cough that clears the lungs of fluid. The immobility weakens blood flow, can cause fluids to build up, and the legs to swell to the point where they crack and flake.

How could this happen, you ask? The Whale will spend its run-time telling you, through interactions with the few people who come to Charlie's unlocked door (it's too much trouble and strain to get up and unlock it). There's the missionary from "New Life", Thomas (Ty Simpkins), who is on rounds, walks in on Charlie and decides to make him his mission, help him find God before he dies, whether Charlie wants to or not. There's Charlie's caretaker (Hong Chau), who checks on him every day, begs him to go to a hospital (he won't, he doesn't want to spend the money which he says will bankrupt him), and suffers through his constant apologizing for making her life so difficult—she'll do it anyway, because her brother was Charlie's former lover (whom he left his family for ten years ago). She genuinely loves him and Charlie's health battles are her battles, but without the burden of weight.

Then, there's Ellie (Sadie Sink), his troubled 18 year old, struggling with school and with life. She understandably is bitter that Charlie is not a part of her life, that he abandoned her selfishly. She visits him because he's reached out to her—his health is bad and he violates the "no contact" rule of his divorce from his wife (Samantha Morton) to try to make some sort of amends to the kid. But, she's challenging. Quite literally. At their first meeting in years, she's stalking to the door and turns to Charlie to the couch and says "Walk to me." And it's an epic struggle, one he can't accomplish and ends up causing damage to the world-within-arm's-reach that he perpetually inhabits. There's cruelty to something so simple. But, for Charlie, it's like he's being asked to walk across the world.

So, how is the movie? Despite it being the most succinct and fish-bowlish of Aronofsky's films, he manages to invest a lot of world-building in it. And Brendan Fraser—here's a post of my only encounter with the man—is brilliant in it. The part could literally be a wallow. Encased in the most restricting make-up since The Elephant Man, he manages to make it a physical performance while maintaining eyes constantly clouded with regret.

But, for me, it was personal. Since my last day-job, I had been "care-taking" for a guy I'd met who became a friend. The man had a congenital hip problem, which made moving around very difficult and extremely painful; this last job was the last work that he could physically do without tremendous amounts of pain. After awhile, he just couldn't sit for a few hours. Too tough.

He moved into a small, spartan "adult living facility" and he would spend his days in a single lounge-chair. He was fine for money; he was on disability. But, his world shrank as he went from needing a cane to needing a walker, and, finally, a wheelchair (which he never got to use). Being sedentary, he never really burned calories, so he gained weight, which only made his immobility—and the struggle to move around—worse (he never got to the weight of the character in The Whale, not even close). Plus, he smoked, had COPD, and his lungs would fill with fluid, his metabolism slowed, his legs and feet swelled (which only made matters worse). Finally, he was on oxygen (while still smoking, although he never had a tank, just a recycler). His world was reduced to the chair, his TV, and the meals which he had delivered. His diet wasn't the best, but he did love his fruits and vegetables.

He loved movies, but even that got affected. His time-clock went all wonky, where he'd stay up all night, sleep during the day, but his attention span started to falter (I would get texts and phone messages at 4 a.m. because he had no sense of time). Movies he would've liked in the past, he couldn't stay awake through. He particularly didn't like movies with multi-verses; one was hard enough to handle on their own. He loved Batman movies, but hated 2022's The Batman because Robert Pattinson whispered all the time. "Epic fail!!" he texted me when he caught it on The Tube (I just held my opinion, saying I was sorry he didn't like it).* And, like Charlie in The Whale, he would apologize in abundance, not wanting to be "a burden." I never considered him so. But, I wish he could've made more of an effort, even though I knew how taxing those efforts were. It's not like he gave up. It's just that he stopped trying, so sedentary had his life become. He died last year. I miss him. 

And all those memories burbled up as I watched The Whale. Anybody not going through that, or knowing someone going through that, might not believe that someone could get themselves into such a state. And take that for not thinking much of the movie...or the character. It's just that grief can do some devastating things. And doesn't always make the most entertaining movies.

 

It's not that they don't care. Of course, they care. It's that they give up trying. Because it's so. damned. hard.

* One of many projects I have planned here are reviews of movies that he kept insisting I should see, but I never got around to. I'm going to do that this year.

The Wrestler

Written at the time of the film's release...

"Career Suicide" 

or 

"Falling at the Meat Market" 

The body is bulked up like a Macy's balloon. The face is lumpy and puffed from bad plastic surgeries to enhance his cheek-bones. The voice is full of razor blades, punctuated by phlegm-caked gasps. 

For awhile now, Mickey Rourke has only taken roles that hide his mangled features. But he's been never less than interesting in those roles (even when he's been less than intelligible). Whether with sunglasses or the elaborate make-up that turned him into Frank Miller's "Marv'" in Sin City,* Mickey Rourke has hidden himself as he does his sporadic film work. Whatever demons drive the actor have made securing financing for films featuring him difficult at best.** There have been a lot of missed opportunities: can you imagine Mickey Rourke in a Quentin Tarantino film? There's a sleaze-match made in back-water heaven. 

So, here he is, Main-Eventing The Wrestler, freak-showed out, his face obscured for the first few minutes of the film, as if delaying the inevitable and pretty soon, you ignore the puffery and start to see the performance, as restrained and gentle as anything he's done in years. 

He's getting all the acclaim for the film's "broken-down piece of meat" scene in the trailers, but there are moments of brilliance here—the animal-eye-of-panic that occasionally creeps out of Robin ("Call me 'Randy'") Ramzinski, aka Randy "The Ram" Robinson during a match, and an extended scene that begins as "The Ram," a heart attack forcing his retirement, steels himself for a shift working the deli counter at his day-job super-market. He spends a sullen couple of hours learning the ropes, and then—Ram-Jam!—his natural entertainer's instincts kick in as he starts dealing with customers. It's a scene that brings out a smile because Rourke is ad-libbing his way through it, glorying in the eccentricity of it all.

It's as good as it gets for Rourke and his anti-Rocky character. It is not fair to say that Rourke is the only reason to see The Wrestler. Marisa Tomei does good tough work here as a working-class stripper, and Evan Rachel Wood makes a lot of the under-written role of Randy's estranged daughter. 

And while Darren Aronofsky became overly-stagey in his last film The Fountain, here he's dogging Rourke's path with tight point-of-view compositions that breaks the kayfabe and paints the world of the small-time pro wrestler—at least from the point-of-view of a face at House shows. The petty rivalries and the macho camaraderie, the brief pre-show negotiated calls, and the sweaty stage-craft of brutality are all on hand-held de-glammed display. It's a world of soiled bandages and card-tables and getting back into the ring. It's as sordid a picture as Aronofsky can make it, but it doesn't hide the moments of personal grace between screw-ups and free-falls. It also shows that the biggest falls these post-modern gladiators take are the self-inflicted ones. It's final shot is one I've been thinking about for days.

The View from 2021: Every few days I still think of that shot.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Mickey Rourke as he appeared in Diner

* The man even did his press interviews for the film in the camouflaging "Marv" make-up. How twisted is that? 

** He was nearly fired from The Wrestler even after Aronofsky had secured a deal for making it for less money than intended. The actor in the wings? Rourke's Rumble Fish co-star Nicolas Cage.

The Fountain

Written at the time of the film's release...

Tapping a Dry Well

First off, this is the best-sounding film I've heard from 2006, with a subtle, supple sound design that makes great use of the stereo field to direct your attention. Secondly, it's one of the most beautiful--a truly different looking set-bound "green-screen" film that doesn't go for vast (and busy) pixilated papier-mache-feeling vistas ala Sky Captain or The Lord of the Rings. There is a perpetually claustrophobic feel to it, despite the exotic locales that extend from an ancient Mayan temple to "the vast reaches of space."

And yet....one expects great things of a Darren Aronofsky film—not just in the images, but also in the ideas. Both Pi and Requiem for a Dream were visually and thoughtfully stunning, so one wanders into The Fountain expecting to be transported to new places, not only visually and aurally, but within the mind as well.

That's why I found The Fountain very disappointing. Though trying to say something profound, it offers up an idea so obvious that it occurs to me only every time I sit down for a meal, and that is: Out of Death Comes Life. To make its point, there are three time-lines in the film: the first takes place in the present day as a researcher named Tom studies treatments of brain tumors in a frenzied race to save his wife Izzy's life. He is so bent on finding a cure that he loses all the precious moments he could be sharing with her. 

Izzy is writing a fanciful book of a Spanish explorer named Tomas (wait, wait...don't get too far ahead yet. I mean, you're right. it's that obvious, but bear with me for a couple more sentences) who invades a Mayan tribe trying to find a fountain of youth (which is actually the sap of a specific tree) for his doomed queen Isobel—the story's a sort of parallel-o-gram to the researcher to wake up and see what he's missing. 

The next time-line features an older Tom, beneficiary of his research that has found the secret of long life (which involves the bark of a certain South American tree), in space-transit to restore his wife...from a tree...by means of the energy of a star (Xibulba) that figured in the Mayan legend of the explorer...well, everything relates--all the elements fall back on themselves in a self-referential heap.* 

All the Tom's of the film (portrayed by Hugh Jackman) are after Eternal Life in some form or another for their Queens...but mostly for themselves, while the Isabel/Isobel's (played by Rachel Weisz) know they will never achieve it. It takes him a near-eternity to learn that life is an eternal process (only not individually!) and that death is a necessary ingredient for it. 

The only original idea in the film is to state that to aspire to immortality is, rather than overcoming death, to deny the process of life and renewal. The idea should be profound, but it comes across as simplistic...and obvious. And dramatically inert. The tag-line for the film is "What If You Could Live Forever?" and the answer appears to be "Then You'd be a Selfish Bastard!"

Still, there is a sense of relief in, for once, seeing a film where death is the inevitable conclusion and you don't start whispering "So DIE already!" underneath your breath (curiously, part of the gorgeous sound-design has the film saying it for you...though not those exact words...frequently through the movie), but it did plant the seed of Elton John's "The Circle of Life" in my head for days for which it must be held accountable. And needless to say, The Fountain won't be at the top of the NetFlix list for the Schindler household.

The View from 2021: Aronofsky has gone on to make The Wrestler (which we'll re-post a review of tomorrow), Black Swan, Noah, and mother! and I'll still go to see any of his movies in a theater because even if he doesn't deliver on story, he does deliver on image, making him one of the more interesting film-makers working. And when he delivers on story...well, the movie will haunt you for days, maybe the rest of your lifetime. Aronofsky is one of the really good ones, even if individual movies are less than satisfying.

* The Fountain had a troubled production history. Millions of dollars were wasted in the first attempt at it (when it starred *shudder* Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett—they would subsequently star in Babel and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). One can only wonder if, when re-started with half its original budget, whole sections of the screen-story that might have given it depth, were ash-canned (I haven't read Aronofsky's graphic novel, which ala Neil Gaiman's "Signal to Noise" might be closer to his original vision) which is a pity. But I don't know. Aronofsky was supposedly inspired to attempt this film by The Matrix, which is just one more thing that overrated geek-flick needs to answer for.

Black Swan (2010)

Written at the time of the film's release....

"The Red Shoes Diaries"
or
"Losing Control (She-Bop, Sh'Bop, Sh'Bop)"

Black Swan is a head-trip, alright. Darren Aronofsky's latest of his films exploring the limits of obsession—the pursuit of it, the need for it, and its cost—never travels too far afield from the whirling dermis-dome of Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman—brave). A "girly-girl" to the nth degree, Nina still lives with Mom (Barbara Hershey—even braver) in a 12 year old's bedroom, blushes in embarrassment when sex is brought up, and still pursues the girl's version of what the Bible calls "childish things"—prima ballerina.

And like the dervishes who spin to achieve some form of religious ecstasy, she is looking for an epiphany in her pursuit of perfection. Be careful what you wish for.

From the loges, it all looks so elegant, but on stage it's a board-thumping, sinew-stretching, bone-popping athletic performance, practiced to such an extent to be made to seem easy.  The body takes a beating.  Callouses form, bones snap, nails bear the brunt of the quest for perfection.  It's beautiful but brutal. And, as any athlete will tell you, it's as much a challenge of the mind, as well. There's the discipline to do the job unerringly, but there's also physical acting, as well. Synapses fire to work the muscles, but those same synapses are under assault psychologically, fraying from the pressures on-stage and backstage.

For Nina, it's an obsession for perfection.* Her director (Vincent Cassel) knows she can nail the star-part of the pure white swan in "Swan Lake," but the vixenish back swan is more of a challenge. "Perfection isn't about control.  It's also about letting go." For the more sensuous black swan, Nina is at a loss, so bottled up in being perfect, she's afraid to open up from the discipline. "Live a little," he suggests, telling her to touch herself.

As if there isn't enough self-abuse going on.

The pressures start getting to her. Given to obsessively scratching her shoulder, she develops a rash at her shoulder blades. Toe-nails split. Her fingernails turn bloody (at one point she tears off a length of finger skin down to the second knuckle). She seems to be coming apart at the seams, and if she can't bear up, she'll be replaced like the departing prima Beth McIntyre (Winona Ryder**).  The number one candidate for the job is Lily (Mila Kunis), an earthy dancer from San Francisco, who typifies the black swan, and who becomes something of a paranoid obsession to Nina from their first glance. By the time Nina actually pulls the bud of a black feather out of her scraped-raw shoulder, it's pretty apparent Nina has crossed a line and, like an exquisite ballet, fantasy has disguised reality.

It's scary, almost a horror film. Aronofsky keeps the film taught, his restless camera taking a position directly behind Nina's head, clod-hopping behind her, seeing what she sees, agitatedly cutting out the dull parts. Then it spins as she does, picking out the neck-snapping details that Nina sees in the blur. Fully a quarter of the film involves a reflective surface (even a shot of Nina looking at her mother's obsessive portraits of her—of course, Mom is trying to "get" daughter perfect, too), even if those mirrors don't always behave well.

And, as he did with The Fountain, Aronofsky proves himself a master of subtle sound-work, using extreme fields to further enhance the disorientation the audience feels inside Nina's head (more than once, I looked to see if there was someone behind me in the theater), and altering reality—making a toe-nail clipper sound like a guillotine, making you feel the gristle of toe-bones as they snap.

And he gets the best out of Portman.  It's a technically tough performance—she's in every scene, and her face, typically beautiful in serenity, is constricted in constant struggle, disrupting the planes of her face into a worried mask that seldom shows her at her best, veering into moments of hysteria.

For the sacrifice of art, she's not pretty, nor is the film, despite its subject matter and occasional forays into the dance-fantasy. How can it be? We're not sitting comfortably in the audience, but perched precariously in Nina's whirling head, dizzy with the spin, that even braking to a screeching stop, continues the momentum in our own minds long afterwards

* I don't want to get too far into this, although I'm sure Aronofsky and his scripters (Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz, and John J. McLaughlin) probably did. There's something called the "Black Swan Theory," about large, unexpected events and their shock-wave effect on human psyches that must come to grips with it. What's most relevant about it are the ten principles the theory's author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, concocts to create a more predictable world: 

1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become Too Big to Fail.
2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains.
3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus.
4. Do not let someone making an "incentive" bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks.
5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity.
6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning.
7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to "restore confidence".
8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains.
9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible "expert" advice for their retirement.
10. Make an omelette with the broken eggs.

Hmmm.  Some of this relates. 
  
** A glance at the four lead actresses, Portman, Ryder, Kunis, Hershey, and most of the supporting ballerinas reveals that they are all similar-looking women—a long line of raven-haired ingenues, like their own organic mirror images.

mother!

This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
or
"I'll Just get Started on the Apocalypse"

A little prediction: I don't care what loopy project Jennifer Lawrence ever legitimizes with her participation, there won't be anything weirder than the rom-horror film mother!, written and directed by Darren Aronofsky (Pi, The Fountain, The Wrestler, Black Swan, Noah). Where the writer-director has successfully crafted bizarre psychological head-films in the past (and sometimes successfully!), here he's got the slip of a concept—a tract, really—and built a scenario that defies story-logic (or any kind of logic) and heads straight into the the stuff of dreams and nightmares—you know, the things that don't survive the light of day. This one barely survives the light of the projector.

mother! has won a not-coveted "F" rating on Cinemascore (or Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes—what the hell's the difference?) because of its "balls-out" pretentiousness and its complete break from any sort of reality in its thesis on the venality of shallow acquisitiveness. It has all the logic of a dream-nightmare. As such, it's an empty vessel (at a hysterical pitch) into which viewers can pour any cockamamie theory based on their personal obsessions (not unlike the Internet).

You realize very early on that the thing is a metaphor—maybe even a "meta-five"—as things progress and escalate beyond the reasonable limits that any self-respecting person might allow. And that's sort of its point; no self-respecting person would. But, if they did, there wouldn't be a movie (maybe it's a "meta-three").

There is a quick preamble of an unsettling image before the scripted title of "mother!" fades on the screen, with a twee sound effect to mark the exclamation mark (this thing is sound-designed to a six-tracked fare-thee-well).
We see "Him" (Javier Bardem)—"He" has no name which is the first sign of pretentiousness—as he places a glass crystal on a pedestal carefully and looks on it with a devoted smile. The dark space that it's in gradually fills with light, charred frames become unblemished and a morning bed becomes filled. 

"Baby?" Jennifer Lawrence's "Her" wakes up alone, and feels over at the empty half of the bed. No answer. She gets up and wanders around in her nightie around and around the round-house of a multi-leveled rustic house that has all the appearance of having fallen from space in the remote, almost painted landscape. This wandering around is done at an almost "stalker" closeness, over her shoulder from her perspective—we don't see anything until she sees it, locking us into her view. And her hearing—we hear ever creak of the wood flooring, every rustle of a drape, every rasp of her breath, no matter how subtle. We become so "full" of tangible awareness that it starts to feel "horror-show" creepy and we start to dread what will come next. The movie's just getting started.

"She" finds "Him"—he was hovering right behind her, and at this point Aronofsky goes into "Super-Close-Up" mode as Bardem's "Him" tells "Her" how much he loves her. The shot of Bardem is a close-up over Lawrence's shoulder, but the reverse shot on "Her" is such a "personal-space-invader" that you feel like you can see her pores. The POV is so vertiginous that you feel like you could fall into the screen at any moment, so uncomfortable is the feeling. But, you don't want to be a part of this nightmare. Leave that for other people.

After a day of "Her" fixing the house up and "Him" not writing in his study (it's just not coming is his explanation) they have a visitor that evening. A doctor (Ed Harris)—an orthopedic surgeon arrives, thinking that the place might be a bed and breakfast. Bardem's "Him" invites him in, which, one guesses, is alright with "Her" despite some hesitancy. The doc and "Him" get along great, and pretty soon, he's staying the night, smoking cigarettes in the house and getting really, really drunk, keeping "Him" out of their bed for the night. Well, that's kind of inconvenient, the doctor violating the serene, safe, secure little two-some they had going.

But, it gets worse (sure, it does). The next morning, the doctor's wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) shows up, wanting to know what's going on and "Him" just invites her in to stay for a few days. By this time, "Her" is all-wtf??? and the level of discomfiture starts to reach a pitch beyond slightly vexed to genuinely annoyed (but not quite to the level of the circling "Why is this happening?" shot), especially once the doctor's wife starts to get a little...invasive. Oh, she's polite, but she can't help herself commenting on the age-difference between "Him" and "Her" and their lack of children. A crowded house is one thing, but a crowded psyche is another and the wife is definitely trying to rent space in "Her's" head.

About this time, I started playing the "Compare" game in my own head just to try and figure out where it was all going. Foolish exercise. But, I was starting to get the creeping paranoia feeling of a John Sturges film called Kind Lady, in which Ethel Barrymore's rich, sheltered widow has her house invaded by an artist (Maurice Evans) she has befriended, who starts to take over her life and then her house, with the help of a disreputable couple (Keenan Wynn and Angela Lansbury). But Aronofsky soon moves past that scenario right into the nightmarishly surreal. 

That's about the time "the kids" show up, one of whom is smug and the other is distressed (they're played by Brendan Gleeson's sons) and that escalates into a knock-down-drag-out fight that has a sociopathic disconnect from any sense of "knowing your place" or "being a good guest" and ends up with spilled blood, a trip to the hospital, and a stain that "Her" just can't get out of the carpet and which starts to seep (once she can't just leave it alone) with an ever-increasing leakage of blood down her basement walls that defies the amount any normal hematopoietic reproduction could produce. With that little horror biology revelation present, the movie starts to go down the bloody slippery slope to its increasingly bizarre conclusion and its Big Point.

So...mother! may produce two after-image reactions: you may want to sit in some coffee shop discussing "what it all means" or you may simply go "pfft" derisively rather than have it spoil a perfectly good cup of coffee. There is conjecture (oh, there is conjecture) to The Big Meaning—Lawrence thinks it's an environmental message movie with the house being Mother Earth (or maybe she is, I forget) that becomes increasingly violated until it all comes burning down, only to be recreated later. I think she's probably fooling herself. As what I think it is, it's a bit more personal than cosmic and has more to do with the arc of a relationship than an eon.

I'd put a spoiler alert here if I thought my fershugginer theory was any better than anybody else's. I see mother! as an hysterical "mea culpa" statement of the way men—it focuses on "creative" men, but it's "men," in general—are constantly in predatory mode when it comes to women and in recycling mode when it comes to relationships. "The things we do to women" is what Martin Sheen's President Bartlett would occasionally muse to his mostly male staffers on "The West Wing." We can call it all the cute names we want (like "The Seven Year Itch"), but men, unless they've grown up sufficiently and matured enough, have a tendency to discard long-term relationships once things "get complicated," or their frailties are exposed, or they no longer feel "in control" of the relationship or their lives. Rather than admit that maybe they never had it, they seek out the new and start from scratch...until such a time as they lose it there, too, the shlemiels. Rinse and Repeat. Male vanities and male proclivities are volatile unless properly aged.

"Don't sit THERE! It's not BRACED yet!" is the line that is the
marker for increased hysteria and decreased tolerance for the situation.

Well, somebody had to say it, and these days such a pronouncement is certainly not going to be by presidential decree. That it comes off as self-serving and a bit hypocritical ("Hey, Darren, who're ya 'seein'' these days?") and that it has a great deal of torture porn to it makes it more creepy and unintentionally anti-feminist than the author might have intended if he wanted it to be a truly self-flagellating movie. Anyway, the movie shows the dark side to aspiring and how even the greatest of instincts can turn despairingly cruel.

Some-body had to say it.

Noah (2014)

A World Cruise with Animal Double Occupancy (Except for a Single Crowe)
or
"How Long Can You Tread Water?"

The story of Noah has been filmed quite a bit: beyond the Bible study presentations, it played a part in Michael Curtiz's 1928 silent film, as well as figuring in films in 1998, 1999, and 2007. Both Yogi Bear (Yogi's Ark Lark) and Donald Duck (Fantasia 2000) have piloted arks, and the story was lampooned in Evan Almighty. 

The most famous depiction is probably John Huston's recreation in The Bible: In the Beginning in which Huston played Narrator, Noah and the voice of God—clearly the director was typecasting.

Now, Darren Aronofsky, who's made Pi, The Fountain, The Wrestler and 2010's Black Swan, has made a distinctly different version of the Old Testament tale, this time verging on a SCI-FI Testament.  

Noah tells the same old story, but in a visually arresting and decidedly bizarre kind of way, trying to satisfy literalists and Darwinists, while probably not doing either. It might, however, satisfy fans of "The Lord of the Rings" films, as Aronofsky has skewed the film slightly in that direction.

Adam and Eve pick the forbidden fruit
(They glow, and the fruit throbs)

It begins with the legend "In the beginning, there was nothing." Then, picks up the story in images of the Bible, but not from the Bible...or any depiction of the Bible known to man. We see the snake in the Garden of Eden first slithering at the screen (oh, yeah, that's right this is in 3-D), then we see Adam and Eve, glowing like the aliens in Cocoon (to get around their nakedness to secure a PG-13? or to advance the notion, like 2001, that they were "deposited" by a higher power—which is basically the story, right?). It's a little disconcerting, a little weird and more fantasy-skewed than "traditional" Bible stories,  The perspective is fresh, probably wanting to appeal to a new generation of movie-goers (who only know super-hero and other fantasy movies) who won't show up for something that smacks of the Bible.

Cain slays Abel, then things get complicated

Once the first murder happens (Cain 1, Abel 0), the world divides into camps—the children of Cain and of Seth.  Cain's descendants are rapacious and murderous, whereas Seth's descendants, like Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins) and his grandson Noah (Russell Crowe) "only take what we need and what we can use." Cain's descendants, led by Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone), who has a murderous connection with Noah, have built a sort of primitive industrialized society, but they are draining the Earth (pictured with a Pangaea-like single continent) of resources (one of which is a glowing mineral that provides a long-sustained source of light). It is revealed to Noah (through a single rain-drop that instantaneously sprouts a flower) that The Creator has something on its omnipresent mind, which is expanded on in a dream that recaps Genesis, reveals Noah standing on a plain covered in blood and the world deluged with water. 

Now, that, dear readers, is a Darren Aronofsky shot

He takes his family, including wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly) and sons Shem and Ham (note to parents: NEVER name your child "Ham") to grandfather Methuselah, who has been living—for a very long time—in a mountain guarded by The Watchers. The Watchers may be the most controversial aspect of Noah, but anyone familiar with fantasy films of the past few years will think nothing of them. Ostensibly, the are angels who came to Earth to help the humans cast out of the Garden of Eden, and who, for their defiance, are punished by the Creator to be forever shackled to the Earth. They're large rock-like giants, a cross between such pop-creatures as Transformers and Ents.  But, they are not in the Bible, and so they are controversial. So, is Noah's telling of the Creation, which sounds like Genesis, but looks like Cosmos, with creatures evolving out of the sea.  This is not your Father's (or your Minister's) Old Testament.

Noah's family wears pants, not robes.  That's different.

The most interesting part of Noah, though, is its transition (which is traditional) of the Creator as, initially, a vengeful destroyer, and the compassionate God who can promise "All secure" by coating the sky in a rainbow. Noah (the character) becomes convinced that The Creator has charged him with saving the innocents of the earth—the animals, and that's it. He will be a care-taker, but his family is all that will survive, and the children are all boys, and an adopted child (played by Emma Watson) who is barren. That's it for humans. No more generations. No more begatting.

A shot from God's perspective (or is it Wes Anderson's??)

The struggle of the story is that once Noah understands The Creator's intentions (as he understands them), he begins to resist any hope that maybe human beings just might be allowed to continue on after the deluge. Even in the face of miracles (as unusual and unexpected as that initial sprouting flower), he is convinced that The Creator's original intention should be carried out, no "if's," "and's" or "birth's," even at the cost of his own progeny. Noah has to learn what it means to "inherit the wind" and learn the spirit of the Word (or image in this case), rather than the letter of it.  

That also won't go down well with fundamentalists.

Not that they'll be missing all that much. It's an interesting interpretation and struggles mightily with themes from the Bible and with the way of Nature, as evidenced, trying to combine them, in word and visual. Anybody trying to do that is brave...and creative. But, Noah, for all its flashes of inspiration, feels a bit inert, an empty spectacle with lots of flash, but not a lot of life, a standard story of good versus evil, with lots of fantasy elements thrown in, the mystical elements being handled by God and his own way with pixels. In a sense, it feels like any other Hollywood block-buster, a disaster movie with a little Faith thrown in, but as false as 2012, with its Mayan miracles. It may be the end of the world as we know it, but I didn't feel fine at all.

All aboard!  Many creatures (many of them fanciful) ready for embarkation.