The White Noise from Don DeLillo, is a great novel with multiple identities; postmodern comedy on academia; critique of consumerism gone wrong; inquiry into the fear of death; apocalyptic epic, experiment in modern media. But adaptable it was not supposed to be. This could all change with Noah Baumbach and his possibly the boldest and most enjoyable film this year.
In White Noise Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig star as a married couple during the early ’80s (their fourth marriage). He’s a college professor teaching ‘Hitler studies’ while she does what she can to take care of four children borne from previous marriages and their progeny. One day, near the campus where they live, a train derails releasing toxic gas that causes an evacuation. The film is divided into three parts: before, during and after the “airborne toxic event”. It premiered at New York Film Festival as its opening title which was probably the most fun audience had at NYFF.
Adam Driver beloved for being Jack Gladney, turns into Jack Gladney in White Noise with his belly sticking out and prescription sunglasses that are somewhere between nerdy or creepy. This movie also stars Gerwig as Babette (character says: “she has important hair”). They genuinely seem happy together in their lives leading them to dance around their kitchen table discussing esoteric topics while others are lost like radio channel flipping radio kids cutting in and out. But even when her addicted reliance on pills leads to traffic accident which threatens their lives and sanity this film maintains same joie de vivre it had while we saw them dancing like that.
Even if there was an unusual pill called Dylar that could cause airborne toxic event (and also threaten life as well), this movie’s swirling cinema keeps every surreal or silly moment within bounds of our belief thanks to Baumbach who directs every single shot perfectly reminding someone about Robert Altman movies with their detailed soundscape and panoply of dialogue. White Noise is always one person talking, or more; if you can keep up it’s amazing and the most interesting film of this year.
Other than the Gladneys (including Sam and May Nivola who are amazing actors for siblings along with Raffey Cassidy whose children played theirs excellently), White Noise also features Lars Eidinger as a madman, Don Cheadle as an Elvis specialist, Andre Benjamin as college professor, and Jodie Turner-Smith as a cold scientist.
The whole movie feels like some kind of postmodern ballet (which by its closing credits actually becomes one set to a new song by LCD Soundsystem), with anamorphic camerawork that constantly changes focus following different characters. Apart from physical movement there is also auditory motion which never stops: voice to voice sound design in the movie. It would be such a pleasure to just sit back and watch this film; while it will probably become available on Netflix at some point, seeing it in the cinema cannot be compared to anything else.
Not just the music having balletic quality, but even the words spoken by each actor that are charming. Though Baumbach is a modern dialogue master, White Noise was successful due to DeLillo’s stuffing of many fearfully intelligent and funny lines in one book so much so that it is shocking why not all these paperbacks immediately explode like some jack-in-the-box bursting from the seams. At times Baumbach wisely transfers nearly word for word from the novel, if we lost some of the best parts of this book in this film (such as ‘the most photographed barn in America’ section).
Filming DeLillo’s dialogues (intellectual to a point of parody but still enlightening) is extremely challenging. The author has written great lines which I could hardly imagine actual people saying — “The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation;” “Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom;” “May the days be aimless. Let seasons drift. Do not advance action according to plan.”
However, somehow Baumbach manages to succeed along with his cast on multiple levels. A lot of insightful conversations from original novel have been included into the film by filmmaker who always makes more naturalistic movies like Marriage Story, The Squid and Whale, and Frances Ha amongst others which contrast sharply with such dialogues as referred to above made by Baumbach himself on several occasions itself hence making what comes out as an altogether odd passion project for him since White Noise is un-grounded.
White Noise is farthest thing one would expect from Baumbach judging by its carefully choreographed sequences, epic disaster movie scenarios, CGI moments and huge crowd scenes involving extras and practical effects alone. It’s a big dumb movie based on one of the greatest masterpieces ever created in America history: an epic called “the great American Novel.” Thus it seems that perhaps style is not so much Baumbach’s issue as his themes are more similar to the white noise.
Noah Baumbach has always been interested in simultaneously criticizing and celebrating intellectualism. From “The Squid and the Whale” where smart parents often make bad decisions to Greenberg, where Ben Stiller played an intellectual with no real life experiences, Baumbach is like a far more successful Whit Stillman — deconstructing, poking fun at, but also embracing the quintessential white intellectual (usually in New York).
Baumbach’s recurring theme of truthful marital problems is also addressed in White Noise. The film, which starred his then-wife Jennifer Jason Leigh along with his current partner Greta Gerwig (who he met while making Greenberg), White Noise is at its most emotionally moving when it focuses on the beauty mundane terror hardship of marriage. These aren’t funny or thrilling moments in the movie yet Baumbach seems to have opened a fresh path through this route-an emotional core into DeLillo’s cold novel.
Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig are the reasons why this whole thing is working because they managed to adopt the same as DeLillo’s dialogue stilted formality while still having three dimensional life outside of the book. But what they do here is nothing short of magical, moving into postmodern personifications of human beings, wearing their clothes for a bit and bringing them to life. It’s just that Baumbach’s film does not look like DeLillo’s White Noise because both actors really committed themselves to characters who we should not take for real in any sense at all. Nevertheless, they make these lines sound natural.
If all this sounds abstract and confusing then it probably means that White Noise is equally so. This movie has people here talking about car crashes as art; poetry being spoken softly about Hitler and Elvis in the same Shakespearean cadence; an argument over what words should be used to describe a cloud of deadly gas falling from the sky onto them.
It isn’t tidy, nor does it fall neatly into any specific genre. It morphs from a family comedy into an apocalyptic nightmare; from a suspenseful thriller into a cartoonish musical. Just like DeLillo’s White Noise which was bursting with ideas, Baumbach’s film is inundated with cinema—its scenes bleed brilliance messily from one another throughout, never pausing for breath but producing one impressive scene after another. Sometimes it hurts so much that it doesn’t want to go where you think it would hence its multiple viewings (preferably at theatre).
Most of White Noise feels like the ultimate Covid film between ‘airborne toxic event,’ evacuations, and quarantines . While exploring before during after effects, White Noise seems like the most complete movie about our collective Covid-19 experience and subsequent existential traumas that many have suffered.
The third act loses its footing somewhat by tripping as if burdened under its own weight and turning incredibly silly, making it the ultimate Covid film. Flaws aside and numerous contradictions notwithstanding, this Baumbach experiment pays off like nothing else on death and societal anxieties in recent years. It is zany but dark; it provokes thoughts but never ceases to be interesting; it has awe-inspiring intelligence, but is sometimes beyond comprehension. Perfectly imperfect, probably the best movie of the year.
Watch free movies on Fmovies
