First end-of-the-world story depicted in ‘Noah’

 

 
Inspired by the epic story of courage, sacrifice and hope, Paramount Pictures presents the epic adventure “Noah” directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Academy Award® winner Russell Crowe as the man chosen to undertake a momentous mission of rescue before an apocalyptic flood destroys the world.

The film offers a mesmerizing visual adventure through everlasting themes of good and evil, destruction and mercy, hope, family and second chances.

The production took the film’s world-class cast and crew on their own unexpected journey as they boarded a vast, rough-hewn Ark hand-built to precise biblical specifications. They then set out to imagine the largely unknown life of Noah and his family, inviting audiences into both the spectacle and the heart of their experience as the earth disappears under a colossal deluge that will undo everything … yet lead to a new day for all Creation.

Joining Crowe in the cast are Academy Award® winner Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Douglas Booth, Dakota Goyo and Academy Award® winner Anthony Hopkins.

The entire story of Noah – the last righteous man in a world overtaken by wickedness, violence and corruption — and the Ark he is commanded to build before earth will be destroyed, takes up just a few pages in the Book of Genesis. But those few passages have had a profound, lasting impact on billions across the globe, holding within the possibility of human redemption and hope even in the face of annihilation.

Yet remarkably, the story of Noah has never before been attempted as a full-scale, visual adventure, nor has any filmmaker delved directly into its core motifs of human failings, human fortitude and divine forgiveness.

“There are comedic versions, there are animated versions, and there was even a Broadway version with Danny Kaye that was a musical,” says “Noah” director and co-writer, Darren Aronofsky. “Historically, the approach has always veered towards folklore, humor and children’s stories. But if you look at the story’s place in Genesis, there is so much more to it than just the animals going two-by-two. It’s the story of ten generations of wickedness of man that eventually climaxes in God coming to a place where he wants to redo it all. For me, it was the very first end-of-the-world story.”

It was also a story he felt could be finally be told viscerally through 21st Century filmmaking techniques. He says: “I didn’t want to add further to the clichéd preconceptions we already have from pop culture … I wanted this Noah to feel fresh, immediate and real.”

Aronofsky’s fascination with “Noah” began at the age of 13: while writing a prize-winning school poem about Noah that Aronofsky initially realized he wanted to be a writer. Only later, as he began his filmmaking career, did he dare to dream of one day expanding the story into a hugely ambitious motion picture. He knew it would be the greatest challenge of his career. But he also began to envision a way to ground the story for today’s film audiences: by imagining Noah’s family – their fears and hopes, their conflicts and their search for meaning — amidst these extraordinary events.

“As the story of the first apocalypse, imagining how a family would survive that was extremely interesting to me,” says the director.

That became the jumping off point for a writing process that would take Aronofsky and co-writer/executive producer Ari Handel deep into the unknown. Since the text of Genesis is brief, contains virtually no dialogue, and offers little suggest Noah’s feelings about the impending flood, they poured through a wide span of religious, historical and scholarly sources to better understand Noah’s times and the significance of his actions. They did not aim for line-by-line adherence to scripture, instead focusing on dramatizing what they saw as the essential themes of the Noah story and exploring the questions posed by the biblical narrative.

Opening across the Philippines on June 11, “Noah” will be distributed in the Philippines by United International Pictures.