Somewhere in Darren Aronofsky’s more than two hour film is a great movie. With an almost impeccable performance by Russell Crowe as Noah – although not quite Oscar worthy, and a riveting performance by Ray Winstone as Tubal Cain, the film is part The Tree of Life and part Transformers. This schizophrenic coupling gives the movie an unsettling aspect. Fallen angels as stone monsters grapple with more lofty ideals of honor and responsibility to God and family.

Seeing this at the Museum of the Moving Image, the audience and I gave it quarter-hearted applause as we slunk out in the dark during the credits. Said to be a compilation of a three-hour Director’s cut and a shorter studio cut, both of which the target audience didn’t like, this released, and more comprehensible, version will probably please no one.

And yet, as I writhed in pain last night over two herniated discs and an incipient cold, both of which allowed me only fitful sleep, I couldn’t get my mind off the movie. Is there a god, and if so, why doesn’t he speak to us? Or, if he does why is it so difficult to understand him? In this movie, Aronofsky’s unseen God is definitely a “He,” an unyielding, terrorizing, Old Testament God, who gives people no slack, only the rope to hang themselves. Yet the ending anticipates more the God of the New Testament. Is this a redeeming value, or only a way to end an otherwise depressing movie?

As Noah struggles to understand what he thinks his God wants, Tubal Cain struggles with a God he wants to hear but who has abandoned him because of his wickedness. Tubal represents modern man who must struggle in the absence of divine revelation, but as the descendent of Cain, he has already lost that struggle. Nevertheless, his attempts to conquer the world and put it under his dominion is a Sisyphean undertaking in light of the more powerful divine and natural forces that dominate this film’s world.