“Noah” is coming with all of God’s watery fury next month, and we presume the floodgates of images and clips will soon be opening up too. But until then, it’s still small servings as Darren Aronofsky puts the finishing touches on the film.
And one of those final details is the soundtrack, which we already know will feature longtime collaborator Clint Mansell, with contributions from Kronos Quartet. And another big talent is joining their ranks, with the legendary Patti Smith writing a key song for the film. “I’ve been friends with Patti for a long time, and I needed a lullaby for the movie because it’s a big part of the story. I was telling Patti about my struggles, and it turns out she’s studied lullabies and writes a lot of them,” the director told Rolling Stone. “She was like, ‘Can I please write it for you?’ And I said, ‘You’re asking me that question?’ [Laughs] I said ‘absolutely’ with as much of a poker face as possible. She wrote this incredible lullaby that Russell Crowe sings to Emma Watson in the movie. It’s really touching and beautiful.”
As Aronofsky later revealed on Twitter, the song is entitled “Mercy Is.” As for the actual movie, for all the fantastical elements his script is said to contain, the director reveals he’s sticking very close to the source material from the pages of the Bible. “The film completely accepts the text, the four chapters in Genesis, as truth—just like if I was to adapt any book, I’d try to be as truthful to the original material as possible. It’s just that there’s only four chapters, and we had to turn it into a two-hour long narrative film. In the Bible, Noah doesn’t even speak. So of course we’ve got to dramatize the story,” he explained. “We tried to remain truthful to the themes and the ideas that are written, but to create a dramatic story for a 21st-century audience. I think people who are believers will see the ideas and the values that they’re looking for represented in the film, and I think people who are non-believers, or come from different traditions, are going to be excited because it’s not your grandmother’s bible. It’s something new, something big and something different.”
And we’ll see how it turns out on March 28th. Until then, here’s two new character posters (via Cinema Buff) and a look at the cover of the English graphic novel release (Aronofsky’s work has already been published in French overseas) from EW.