Movie Review: Noah

Noah was an entertaining film that had a nodding acquaintance with the source material, some decent performances, and a lack of narrative focus that turned it into a mess.  It's not boring, but it's not particularly good, either.  The more interesting elements were overshadowed by the thematic chaos: Aronofsky wanted to do a Biblical picture, but he wanted to give it a modern sensibility.  The result was an attractive, disappointing failure.

• Green Day: It's obvious that Aronofsky's intent all along was to shoehorn environmentalism into a setting that had no place for it: the antediluvian Earth.  The Biblical version of Noah explicitly states that the whole of humanity was bent toward sin: "God saw that the people on earth were very wicked, that all the imaginings of their hearts were always of evil only. (Genesis 6:5)"  That won't do in Hollywood.  Making judgments about other people's behavior or mores is Simply Not Done unless those mores conflict with standard Hollywood groupthink. So Aronofsky had to come up with a real sin: pollution.  Strip-mining.  Deforestation.  That's what would make God mad enough to drown the world.  It's ludicrous.
  
• He's a Beauty: Ray Winstone did a great job as Tubal-cain, the main human antagonist.  Brutal, thoughtful, manipulative, and entirely useless to the story.  There was no reason to have him in the film.  He did nothing to advance the plot, change the circumstances, or affect the outcome.  He had the best lines, but there wasn't any need for them or him.  The silliest part was him stowing away on the Ark and sitting in the hold, hidden by Noah's son Ham, for months without anyone knowing.  At least we know what happened to the unicorns and gryphons and dinosaurs: Tubal-cain ate 'em on the long voyage.
• Somebody's Watchin' Me: The Watcher angels were extremely cool, but too reminiscent of stony Ents.  According to the Bible, the Watchers were the angels who descended to Earth to sleep with human women.  The offspring of these unions were the Nephilim, half-angel, half-human hybrids who were said to be giants: "There were giants on the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men who were of old, men of renown. (Genesis 6:4)"  Because Aronofsky had to change the reason for God's anger at humanity from sin to environmental disaster, the Watchers couldn't be human-like enough to father Nephilim: they had to be monsters.  Interestingly, Aronofsky did mine the Book of Enoch for the narrative that the Watchers taught men metalworking and other skills, which added depth.
• Noah's Crazy Train: Aronofsky undercuts his own environmental schtick by having Noah turn into a cross between Paul Ehrlich and Charles Manson in the second half of the film.  His extremism, self-loathing and hatred for humanity weren't hinted at in the early stages to make his later insanity anything but jarring and out of place.  It's unbelievable to me that his family would, over the course of several months, accept his insistence that if Shem's wife bore a girl, he'd kill the baby right there and then.  They should have thrown him overboard as soon as they could, because he was clearly insane.
• H.A.M.: While I understand that to build tension in a story that everyone knows the outcome of, you have to create other conflicts, having Ham's lack of female companionship be such a sticking point seemed clumsy, even absurd.  Once again, Aronofsky had to go outside of the source material to create tension, which was unnecessary: there was already some weirdness going on in the Ark.  "And they made their father drink wine that night, and the firstborn went in and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. (Genesis 19:33)"  Why not look at that for conflict?  It certainly was...strange.  Did they just have cabin fever?  
• Methusaleh as Gandalf: There are magic rocks in the antediluvian world called Zohar, according to Aronofsky, which produce pyrotechnic effects not unlike the light crystals in Land of the Lost.  This was also silly and unnecessary.  What made things worse was the presence of Methusaleh, who had undefined sorcerous abilities that made him seem more like Gandalf than a servant of the Creator.  He didn't need to be there, or if he did, he should have had a stronger role.  As it was, Anthony Hopkins did the best he could with him, but the character just wasn't written well.

I entirely understand those who take offense to Aronofsky's altering of Scripture to advance a secular agenda in this film, but for me, the true offense was that the movie wasn't that good.  It looked good.  The people in it acted well.  But for the most part, it was a silly, overproduced mess.  I'm not sure if it's worth watching just to see how much Aronofsky hosed the Biblical story of Noah, but if you want a fantasy film about people and water and animals, then it wasn't half-bad.  Three out of five stars.

Movie Review: Mercy

There was a good deal to like in Mercy, touted as being adapted from Stephen King's short story Gramma, but the pieces didn't quite fit together in a way that made for a satisfying film.  Its great strengths were the performances and the short running time; there was a really good movie in there somewhere, but it failed to coalesce.  There will be spoilers here.

• Acting: Chandler Riggs did an excellent job as George, and the lack of a marshal's hat on his head didn't detract from his performance.  He had some difficult things to do, and did them all well.  Shirley Knight as Mercy was appropriately creepy when necessary, but rather bland at other times.  The only other standout was Mark Duplass as Uncle Lanning, and we didn't see him very much; he used his comedic skills to great effect here.
• Supporting Roles: The other characters were entirely unnecessary and did nothing to advance the plot.  Dylan McDermott was a waste of time (I'm getting the impression that people like to put him in TV and films so that he can be a name in a list of credits).  They gave George's brother Buddy nothing to do; his thing about wanting to be a chef provided one vaguely amusing moment with sushi, but that was it.  The mom wasn't there enough, and when she was, she couldn't be depended on.
• Themes: Other than the supernatural themes, there were some elements to the story that were thought-provoking.  Dealing with a parent who's too old to take care of herself was touched on, but not fleshed out very much.  There were two aspects of parental abuse brought up: Mercy's abuse of her own children and George's mom's abuse of George and Buddy.  It's a fine point, but I think that it was a form of child abuse to uproot your two non-adult children and make them care for an elderly grandparent who's not only delusional, but dangerous (at one point Mercy slashed Buddy's arm open with a letter opener).  I don't know where Mom's head was, but she obviously didn't have her own children's best interests at heart.
• I Hastur Go Now: The Lovecraftian promise of Hastur, mentioned early on, didn't pan out at the end with the movie's climax.  The monster that came out of Gramma looked more like Swamp Thing than a demon, though I did appreciate the illustration that included the Yellow Sign (blink and you'll miss it).  The Weeping Book was also pretty neat; a kind of poor man's Necronomicon, if you will.
• Thrills: There were a few genuinely shocking and/or horrifying moments in the film: what happens to Buddy after they throw the Weeping Book into the wood chipper, Mercy going bananas with the hypodermic, the last phone call with George's aunt.  It's only a shame that there weren't more moments like it.
• Ghost Girl: The ghost girl was entirely unnecessary and clouded an already murky plot.  George's apparent psychic/supernatural abilities didn't help him to any great degree, and having him see his grandmother's excised spirit here and there was neither creepy nor poignant.  She should've been dropped like Dylan McDermott.
• Narration: Also unnecessary was George's narration.  Such things are usually put into a movie because the writer wants to tell you something rather than show it to you, but in this case it just felt extraneous.  If you want us to know that you and your grandmother had a great relationship before she started to die and get possessed by the spirit of a Great Old One, perhaps you should show more scenes of you two spending time together.

3 stars out of 5.  You should watch it on Netflix if you have less than 90 minutes to burn and want to see the kid from The Walking Dead in something other than a horror TV show.

"Get out of my MIND!"

I've been rereading Frank Herbert's Dune.  I've read it several times since my teens, but this is the first reread in a decade.  Now that I'm reading with both eyes open: one to be entertained and one to see what Herbert did and learn from it, I'm finding brand new things to like and dislike about the novel.  Despite some flaws, it's still captivating.

Like many, I came to Dune through David Lynch's movie.  Dune purists hated it.  The critics thought it was laughable.  It was overwrought, overacted, and, in the Alan Smithee extended version, way overlong.

I loved it.  I still do.

It's colored my reading the book.  I can't help but read Paul's dialogue in Kyle MacLachlan's too-precise voice.  Linda Hunt has become the Shadout Mapes for me.  The late, great Robert Jordan was unfortunately miscast as Duncan Idaho, a small role in the film but a massive one in the books.  Can't forget Sting as Feyd-Rautha (in later years, when my friends and I played Avalon Hill's awesome Dune strategy board game, we'd always refer to him as "Lovely Feyd" in a breathy Kenneth McMillan voice).

If I'd read the book first, I'd no doubt have a different opinion of both it and the film.  Better or worse, I don't know.  The book was definitely better: a typical claim.

Contrast that with Mario Puzo's The Godfather.  Same situation: I'd seen the movie first, then read the book.  The difference here is that the movie was much, much better.  It was tighter, more cohesive, more entertaining.  The book had some weird subplots that included a mostly superfluous Johnny Fontaine and a young woman who needed an operation on her private parts, neither of which were connected.  Characters came in and out with little rhyme or reason.  It was a fun read, but didn't do much for me.

Our current media culture tells us that the book is no longer enough.  If it's popular, it needs a movie.  Or a television series.  Or a movie sequel.  I don't attach a value judgment to this: it is what it is.  Before I became a dad, I went to see a lot of movies, and I still like to watch them when I have the time.

What the media culture creates is a crossover effect for the book.  The Dune phenomenon I mentioned earlier can't be avoided.  David Lynch's bizarre vision of Frank Herbert's universe has, in part, become my vision of it.  I know I'm not alone in this.  What's seen can't be unseen.  Lynch has put himself into my copy of the book.

The late Puzo and equally late Herbert aside, do the authors of these books know what's been done to them in the minds of their readers?  Translating them to a new medium doesn't change the words printed on the page, but it does alter our perception of them.  They no longer exist in discrete vacuums; one format informs and alters the other.