Why Darren Aronofsky's NOAH is my Favorite Film of 2014

Didn't see this one coming, did ya?

That's right. NOAH, Darren Aronofsky's biblical epic about the titular ark, is my pick for the best film of 2014. A movie decried by religious groups for unfaithfulness to the source text, a movie that currently has a 6.0 rating on IMDB, with many users dubbing it one of the worst movies they have ever seen.

I'm here to tell you that they're wrong. They're so very, very wrong.

INTERSTELLAR was a film that was given major props for its scope and ambition, for willing to be such a massive movie filled with so many big ideas. And while it is indeed true that Christopher Nolan did fill his movie with big ideas, I generally found the execution of those ideas somewhat lacking, in that they were boiled down to simple sentiment (LOVE CONQUERS ALL AND TRANSCENDS TIME AND SPACE AND YADA YADA YADA) by the time that the credits rolled.

In many ways, NOAH is the movie that INTERSTELLAR could've been, that it should've been.

NOAH takes its biblical template, and uses the supernatural angle of the text of Genesis in order to build what is essentially a fantasy world, one that calls to mind less church readings and more the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. It's THE LORD OF THE RINGS, only with far greater moral complexity and bigger ideas at play. Aronofsky takes the large budget Paramount granted him and crafts a blockbuster that is stuffed with the sort of questions about morality and quandaries about the meaning of God that would be more at home in a $2,000,000 arthouse movie. The first half has all the sweep of a Peter Jackson movie, as Noah dutifully fulfills the mission he believes God has chosen him for, but in the second half, things take a turn for the smaller, and with it, the darker. Noah is left to face the reality of what he has done (as in, bring 6 people on the ark and a whole bunch of animals while the rest of humanity is left to drown), as he and his family hear the screams of men, women and children as they drown while desperately attempting to cling to the side of a mountain. Noah descends into madness, believing that he must stay on the Creator's path, even if that means innocent blood must be shed. Russell Crowe sells this finely sketched descent perfectly, as the second half of the film's closest cinematic cousin is none other than Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING (another of my favorite films, and in my opinion the best horror movie ever made). It is truly Crowe's finest performance in over a decade, as he sells the grandiosity and extremity that Noah's character eventually goes to. Some of the other acting is questionable (Jennifer Connelly has one moment that feels overacted, and Douglas Booth is kind of wooden), but Logan Lerman and Emma Watson are also exceptional. Aronofsky has chosen to fill in the blanks left by the Bible in very interesting ways, and yet the movie's happy directly-out-of-Genesis ending feels completely earned as well. It's the joy at the end of a long, hard journey, not unlike the experience of watching some of Disney's darker animated classics. Clint Mansell's score is also one of the most underrated of the year, big and full of extremely chilling portents of doom, and Matthew Libatique's cinematography is as stellar here as it was in the rest of Aronofsky's oeuvre.

The greatest triumph of NOAH is that, despite its massive budget (ten times more than any other of Aronofsky's movies, excluding THE FOUNTAIN), and box office expectations, it feels like it fits right in with the rest of the director's filmography. Paramount let Aronofsky make the movie he wanted to make, and now we get to reap the rewards.

Don't listen to the negative hype. NOAH is destined to be a unsung masterpiece, and it's, in my opinion, the best movie of 2014.

Now, onwards and upwards to 2015! JUPITER ASCENDING, FURIOUS 7, AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, and STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS. I'm giddy with excitement.

^The most that I've fanboyed out recently