Darren Aronofsky‘s Noah is one huge question mark for me. As much as I love Aronofsky’s work I fear his first big budget studio feature may be one where he is overly constrained and may not reflect his original vision as we’ve already heard it has been edited into “a version that will lure the broadest possible audience”.
I remain excited to see what he has to offer and today we have two new character posters (see below) along with word Patti Smith has written a lullaby for the film titled “Mercy Is“, which will be sung by Noah (Russell Crowe) to his daughter Ila (Emma Watson).
As for the film itself, Aronofsky sticks to the “everyone” line telling Rolling Stone, “The hope is that the film is for everyone. The film completely accepts the text, the four chapters in Genesis, as truth – just like if I was to adapt any book, I’d try to be as truthful to the original material as possible. It’s just that there’s only four chapters, and we had to turn it into a two-hour long narrative film. In the Bible, Noah doesn’t even speak. So of course we’ve got to dramatize the story.”
He continues, “We tried to remain truthful to the themes and the ideas that are written, but to create a dramatic story for a 21st-century audience. I think people who are believers will see the ideas and the values that they’re looking for represented in the film, and I think people who are non-believers, or come from different traditions, are going to be excited because it’s not your grandmother’s bible. It’s something new, something big and something different.”
As much as I love everything he’s saying there, I can’t help but already see the “Blasphemy!” headlines. He may “hope” the film is for everyone, not everyone understands dramatization. Check out the full interview right here, it’s pretty good.
Noah releases stateside on March 28.
