anthony hopkins – Cinema Perspective

Filmmakers often tell the story of their childhood through their pictures; recent examples of this include Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma and Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast. Acclaimed writer and director James Gray looks back at his own formative years in Armageddon Time, a coming-of-age drama set in Queens, New York City in 1980. The semi-autobiographical plot follows schoolkid Paul (Banks Repeta) who becomes friends with black student Johnny (Jaylin Webb) on his first day of sixth grade, bonding over their fascination with space travel. His mother Esther (Anne Hathaway) and father Irving (Jeremy Strong) struggle to cope with their son’s regular mischievous behaviour, but he always listens to his grandpa Aaron (Anthony Hopkins) who inspires and mentors the youngster, delivering nuggets of wisdom and teaching him about the importance of his family’s Jewish roots.

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Projects which bring biblical stories to the big screen are often shrouded in controversy and Noah has expectedly followed suit. Is there room for creative licence when adapting chapters from the Old Testament? Is it possible to please everyone or are you guaranteed to cause offence? Luckily, the director at the helm is visionary risk-taker Darren Aronofsky, best known for his surreal style in films such as Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream. He makes this epic far more than a dull lesson in religious education but his auteurism is marred by the boundaries of the subject matter. In case anyone is unfamiliar with the story, Noah (Russell Crowe) is a strong family man who receives a spiritual message from God, or The Creator as he is referred to throughout the film. He assumes the responsibility to build an ark to survive an almighty flood, preserve the planet and save it from human destruction. The slant on this version is that there is a villain of the piece Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone), who wants to kill Noah and have the ark for himself and his army.

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