The Noah (1975)

Memorable, crazy movie

Just so...so bad

An absolute waste of money

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

This is not at all what I expected. The film depicts what happens to one man who finds himself as the last survivor of the planet after a nuclear exchange. Emerging from a bunker, where the radiation has killed off everyone else, he comes out of a military bunker, begins his search for other life. This film is especially important today with the Nuclear threat being greater than it has been in 30 years. The hero is washed ashore on some Far Eastern Island, has food and shelter and nothing else, no animals, nothing. Is alone and isolated. I wondered as I watch it, How would I have coped. By the time the film was half over, I had an overwhelming respect and appreciation for my wife, and dog. I don't think I will ever be the same after watching it.

It would be easy to dismiss this film as dull, and although there's no doubting the fact that I found this film very boring, I'm going to try to explain why this film's very unique concept just didn't come together in the end.That's what I've got to give the film kudos for: it's an original idea: not just being stranded on a desert island, but assessing a man's insanity by recreating a world all from his memory and imagination. Also, you can't fault the filmmakers for having a real stab at this weird way of showing the insanity that comes with isolation, and some of the sequences, especially those using historical recordings, were interesting to see attempted.However, in the end, it just doesn't work, largely because it's impossible to get engrossed in this film. It's an interesting story, but it's such an inaccessible way of presenting it, with unthinkably slow pacing, and a very pretentious latter stage that borders on the incomprehensible, and that all comes together to not only make this hard to understand, but exhausting to get through, being one of the heaviest film that I know I'll ever see.One of the other things that frustrated me about this film was Richard Strauss' performance. His chemistry with the voices in his head is weirdly brilliant in the opening stages, and it makes for some intrigue, but it's his descent from isolation to insanity to complete madness as the film goes on that I just didn't buy.His performance is ultimately not only intriguing, but it's annoying. He shouts his way through minutes on end of dialogue with himself, so loudly and incessantly that it just hurt my ears watching it, and was perhaps one of the most painful and draining periods of a film I've ever seen.www.themadmovieman.com

This is one of these movies that linger.Following the total annihilation of the human race only one person appears to be alive. An old soldier, close to retirement, when the bombs start falling, escapes across the sea and finds himself on a deserted island, filled with derelict motor vehicles and empty military barracks showing a history of both chines and Japanese occupants.Loneliness creates an illusionary friend, whom he can be responsible for (and boss around), and by mistake he also makes a woman, who turns out to despise him. When his friend and the woman couple, he evicts both from his house (his mind).Then he makes a boy, and in quick succession more children, a whole school class, and education system and a graduation day, where he sends all of his students out to (re)populate the earth. But it soon turns out they make a mess of things - rather than coming to him, their teacher, for advice, they just squabble and murder one another. So he lays down simple rules - basically the stone tablets of Moses, but voiced as the simple man he is. But his children pay him no heed.From then on everything just goes downhill - his creations recreate all that went before his arrival to the island; the final third of the film sees The Noah, as his first friend called him, marching around the island trying to bring control at least to his illusionary military troops, while the recordings of global warfare and unrest rack his mind to the point, where he COMMANDS the silence be.He retracts to his bunk in the barracks, and silence falls on his world, the minute he closes his door. Here he discovers that the radioactive warning tag that he carries on his uniform has gone black. The rain was radioactive, and now he has no other mission but to wait for death.THIS is a brilliant movie! Forget the Biblical allegorical stuff and view it in a larger perspective: Whether messages came from a Maker or not, men translated the messages into words. I.e. Men made the world in their image - they made what they already were. The singular human being will always create the world in his own image - his loves, his fears, his longings, his desires, all that man makes is himself.The Noah tries to make a new world, and tries to take control of this new world, because this is how he is brought up - he tries to delegate responsibility and is disappointed; he tries to take full control, and is disappointed; he relinquishes responsibility and is disappointed; he closes his door on his creation, his fellow men and all their disappointments, and all he gets from all and everything he did, is death.A very poignant and eternal message: You are what you are, and so is your world. All changes must then come from within. We are human beings from how we deal with the perception of our world. The perception is the world - that is the weak and the strong point. There is no one reality, no right reality - only different views of wild wild nature.If you are not well versed in Roman languages, or the imagery of WWII and the Cold War, you'lld do best in getting a subbed version, so as to enjoy the cultural commentating embedded in the use of German, French, Italian, Spanish and other war commentators as well as people on the street in wartime.This is not an anti-war movie, as some might think - it's a film about reality.

I think that someone was trying to be allegorical. They Failed.The first 2/3 of the film are mildly interesting as Noah invents friends and something resembling _DRAMA_ shows up, you almost feel as if maybe a _PLOT_ might ensue. There are nascent _CHARACTERS_ and some minor _CONFLICTS_ hinting that a larger conflict could occur. (Protagonist is up the tree, we know that rocks can be thrown at him.. and we are eagerly anticipating the first volley...) But then....nothing happens.The final third of the film degrades into a cacophony of a history-buff's self-serving game with an audio tape recorder. All links to plot, allegory, drama, character, conflict, and sanity are severed. Maybe this is supposed to represent Noah's ever-less-grounded state of mind, but the degree of his grasp on reality was well-established earlier in the film and the noise becomes as annoying as a Phillip Glass composition.Now to 2 small details worth mentioning: 1)There are some weak humorous points such as Noah's ability to construct a latrine or Noah's resemblance to one of the Marx Brothers. 2)The in-your-face allusion to The 10 Commandments was out of place and over the top.