Several other Bible movies have come along in the two years since Noah came out, but for my money none of them can hold a candle to Darren Aronofsky’s film for sheer imagination, epic visuals and a passionate engagement with the biblical text.
So I’m happy for any excuse to talk about that film, and today’s excuse comes courtesy of Bustle, which recently spoke to the film’s star, Russell Crowe — presumably while he was promoting his new film The Nice Guys, which comes out this Friday.
The gist of the interview is that Crowe still supports Aronofsky and his vision:
No matter the amount of controversy the film brewed at the time, the film’s star still stands behind his director, two years later. “I really appreciated Darren’s perspective in that film. I thought he was being extremely brave,” Crowe tells Bustle. “Darren had very good reasoning for all of the decisions he made. Some of his solutions were elegant solutions considering the information that’s available for that particular story. Ultimately, when I go on a film set, I’m there to do the [filmmaker’s] version of the film.”
True, a filmmaker’s vision is his or her own, and how he or she makes their film is entirely their prerogative. “He studied the biblical writings. I would back Darren Aronofsky — having an intellectual conversation about Noah and the meanings of Noah — against anybody, whatever religious perspective. He really did the work and he knew what he was trying to say with the movie,” Crowe says.
Though audiences may agree to disagree, the 52-year-old star hammers home why he agrees with Aronofsky’s choices. “You never saw an animal in Noah that you recognized, because he’s allowing for natural selection to take place over time,” Crowe explains. “He’s also cutting apart any biblical time line, saying, ‘We’re not dealing with that, we’re dealing with something that could be 150,000 years ago.'”
Incidentally, the Bustle writer seems to think that the lack of non-white actors in the film was a bigger controversy at the time than its creative (some would say revisionist) use of the Bible, but that’s not how I remember it. For more on that, click here.
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