April Apocalypse Part I: Life's What You Make It

Like any hack-y, low quality, amateur writer, I'm all about alliteration, so for the month of April, I thought I'd look at some of my favorite end-of-the-world movies in a series called April Apocalypse. In my opinion, the best examples the genre has to offer are films that bring some allegorical elements to the table and comment on society, human behavior, religion, politics or what-have-you. No P/A film that I know of is more ambitious in this respect than Daniel Bourla's 1975 oddity, The Noah. In it, people, cultures, armies, even entire civilizations are created and destroyed by just one character.

In a mash-up of Robinson Crusoe, the Book of Genesis and twentieth century history, writer/director Daniel Bourla creates a film that is both intimate and epic in scope. With a lead character that can easily be interpreted as either the solitary everyman or the lord almighty Himself, Bourla ambitiously critiques mankind, religion, indoctrination, and well, just about everything to do with anthropology. He attempts to relate this monumental allegorical tale through a lone soldier who has survived the apocalypse and landed on a deserted island paradise. The soldier emerges from his small life raft with his gear including, amusingly, a set of golf clubs. The island is devoid of all former enemies but is littered with a multitude of their broken down vehicles and abandoned structures some of which house pictures and busts of ideological leaders. The soldier wastes no time and sets up camp in an orderly, military fashion.

Oscar-nominated character actor Robert Strauss basically puts on a one-man show, with some voiceover and newsreel audio assists along the way, and plays the lead as arrogant, bellicose but ultimately pitiable. Imagine a much angrier, misogynistic, ultra-conservative Tom Hanks (minus the volleyball) from Zemeckis' Cast Away and you'll have an idea of Strauss' character in The Noah. Despite the initial churlish aspects of the soldier, one can't help softening toward him once he meets/creates his companion Friday. Friday, who is voiced by Geoffrey Holder in his maaaavelous baritone, is initially subservient to "The Noah" nearly to the point of noxiousness. But since The Noah is Friday's creator, his eager-to-please attitude makes perfect sense. And the soldier seems only too happy to be worshipped by Friday. As a sign of friendship (or his ever-spiraling decent into madness), The Noah builds Friday his own latrine.

Trouble comes, however, with the introduction of The Noah's next creation - a woman. The soldier tips his hand early on about his feelings on women in monologue statements like "I never had to pay for it in my life" which when a man states this, it generally indicates two things:
1. He has always had to pay for it.
2. He can't relate to women in any way, shape or form.
The woman, Friday-Anne, voiced by the great Sally Kirkland, immediately throws passive-aggressive attitude The Noah's way while simultaneously warming up to Friday. It's exactly the kind of antagonistic relationship I imagine Lilith would have had with God. She never becomes outright disrespectful, but just questions everything in a snarky tone. Of course, the ersatz Adam and Eve are eventually tossed out of paradise in a somewhat darkly comical scene leaving The Noah to start from scratch. His next effort begins with teaching children all the important things.

Eventually the children grow up, form cultures and begin to argue causing an ever-increasing cacophony of voices which The Noah attempts to quell with religious dogma.

Ultimately though, the chaos not only continues, but morphs into 20th century history. As The Noah perpetually wanders through the broken down, abandoned vehicle remnants on the island, the audible history of the past decades play out. By the end of the film, whether you interpret the soldier as a solitary, mad survivor or a lone, flawed god, you wind up feeling quite sorry for him and mankind in general.

Bourla's concept is absolutely brilliant and quite well executed, considering it's his only directorial effort. Strauss is just the kind of range-y character actor to handle a role that is alternately amusing, serious or sad. My only problems with the film were the slow pace and the needlessly long dirge-like, audio stroll through 20th century events. A few minutes of it brought home the point, but Bourla let it play out for nearly half an hour. I can enjoy a prolonged sequence like that in a Béla Tarr film, but it seems excessive here. 

The film has a strange history in that it was made in 1968, not screened at all until 1975 and never released theatrically. It is available on DVD and highly recommended for the patient, intellectual, P/A fan.

Score 7.75