Man with a divine mission

MANILA, Philippines - Regarded as one of the finest actors of our time, Oscar-winner Russell Crowe (Gladiator, Man of Steel) is often sought after to bring an earthy humanity to towering characters. When the filmmakers began talking about who could carry the story of Paramount Pictures’ new searing epic Noah, his name quickly came to the forefront.

But playing Noah would be an extreme undertaking even by his standards — in part because Noah has never before been seen on screen as a real man trying to stand up under the most enormous burden in human history: To assure the survival of all living things.

Says director Darren Aronofsky, “Russell intrigued us because he is always authentic, and so very, very believable. No matter what, you never question if Russell believes in what he’s saying. And of course, the possibility of working with someone with that much talent, that much power, was very exciting for me — just to see what we could create together.”

To help recruit him, Aronofsky made Crowe a promise: He would never be shot in the hoary cliché with a pair of giraffes behind his head. But once he began his research, Crowe found that trying to get inside Noah from a modern perspective was endlessly fascinating. “You start with all these preconceived notions about Noah, but when you start to break down what the world might have been like in his time, it’s very intriguing,” he says.

The biggest challenge for Crowe was coming to terms with how a man would grapple emotionally and morally with such an urgent but still hazy vision of disaster from the Creator. “Noah only starts to understand the task he faces as a sort of deduction because he’s not getting a lot of direct input,” Crowe explains. “What he understands is that he needs to look after all the animals, but he doesn’t have any information at all about how he is to address the human question, so a lot is left for him to figure out. One of the cool things about him is that I don’t think he finds there’s any honor in this job. In fact, he sees it as the worst job he could possibly get from the Creator. But he will do everything in his power to finish it.”

Now showing nationwide, Noah is distributed in the Philippines by United International Pictures through Columbia Pictures.