Noah and Ila’s Story enhance Aronofsky’s cinematic vision
Darren Aronofsky’s newest film Noah has met with mixed reviews and garnered some down-right disgusted reactions, but most openly high-profile and controversial projects usually do. Personally, I was on board up until the halfway point, but arguing motivations and plot contrivances is best kept in message boards and comment threads.
Instead, this post is meant to quickly share some thoughts on the film’s official novelization from Titan Books as well as a short Young Adult tie-in book titled Noah: Ila’s Story. I recently had the chance to give these two books a read, and there’s just something about diving into a movie’s world by different means that makes the experience more enjoyable. I connected more with the characters, understood more of the story’s intentions, and was able to explore Aronofsky’s vision for Noah at my own pace.
Read more about my thoughts regarding Noah and Noah: Ila’s Story, and find links to where you can pick them up, after the jump.
NOAH – $7.99 / 304 pages (click to buy)
Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you view such things, the official movie novelization of Noah is an almost beat-for-beat copy of its cinematic counterpart. That is to say, if you’ve seen the movie the novelization isn’t going to reveal any secrets or try to throw you for any loops plot-wise, but that doesn’t mean the book doesn’t flesh out and help realize the vision director Darren Aronofsky adhered to while telling his story. Moments that speed by on screen are satisfyingly detailed on the page, and reading through emotionally-fueled encounters or rich atmospheric descriptions immerses you in the world in a way visual interpretations fail to do time and time again when it comes to film and book comparisons. Something about taking your time reading through a gut wrenching passage, and re-reading it to feel that pull and tug on your emotional strings again, will always trump zipping by the same moment as it’s presented in a movie, and the novelization of Noah continues this tradition of literary superiority.
The above paragraph my come across as a “Movies bad, books good” sermon, but, given the nature of this site, that’s far from the truth. To the credit of the book, there’s just more you can do with over 300 hundred pages and limitless time in the hands of a reader than you can in 2 hours of screen time. For example, what we see on screen as small cut accompanied by blood stains is described as “a severe belly wound” that had “opened her up from hip to hip” on the page. Following up that mental image is a quick “It was only because she was lying on her back that her innards had not spilled out through the slit” that solidifies the horrific wound in our brains much more successfully than the hurried glimpse we get from the film. These moments are everywhere in the Noah novelization, little snippets that enhance the overall effect of what’s happening, and it’s these moments that make the book worth reading.
On top of intimate examinations like the one above, the novel also takes the time to describe settings and scenes more thoroughly than the film. Where the ark, Tubal-cain’s camp, the pit, and the mountain are simply stages for actors to perform on, in the novel you’re introduced to different rooms, borders, and textures that make each location feel fully realized. If you wanted more of this Noah, the book is a perfect way to dig a little deeper, see a little further, and feel like you’re a bigger part of the action. What more can you ask for from a complementary book?
Noah: Ila’s Story – $6.99 / 112 pages (click to buy)
Noah: Ila’s Story, on the other hand, is a drastically slimmed down telling of the same tale. That said, after seeing the film, I realized Ila wasn’t really present for some of the more action-heavy moments of the story, and reading through this short book was an interesting way to experience the proceedings through someone else’s shoes. If they were so inclined, publisher’s could create these little accompany novels for all kinds of side characters in an almost choose your own adventure-style of storytelling. It’s a fun way to enhance the experience without digging too deeply into the details. If the novelization of Noah (above) was the omniscient, all-encompassing, multi-angle telling of the tale, Ila’s Story is told by the poor soul stuck at the edge of the crowd who doesn’t quite catch the whole picture.
Complete with a mid-section consisting of various film photos, Ila’s Story is a book meant for the younger crowd. I remember reading similar books, either based on movies or popular cartoons, when I was in grade school and junior high, and these kinds of literary interpretations definitely have an audience. The author is aiming to tell the story without being too violent, graphic, or detailed, and she manages to do so nicely. That said, there were times where it felt moments were being glossed over or recapped in dialogue simply to keep the reader up to speed as events whipped by. The result is a mixed bag of foot notes and glimpses into the mind of one of the more uninteresting side characters of Noah. Ham’s Story, or even Tubal-cain’s Story, would have been a bit more entertaining, but you can’t fault the book for wanting to let us look through Ila’s eyes.
Great for a quick read, but nowhere near as fleshed out as the Noah novelization, Ila’s Story makes for a fun complementary piece if you just can’t get enough of this unique interpretation of the biblical classic.
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There’s a good chance you can still catch Noah in theaters if you haven’t seen the film or want a second helping. I’m a fan of Aronofsky’s work, but I’ll wait until the movie sees home video release before watching it again and adding it to my collection.
Hope you enjoyed the post! If I’m lucky, maybe more book reviews and movie tie-ins will make their way into the rotation in the future.