White Noise

White Noise is another disappointing Don DeLillo adaptation. One of the most difficult tasks of any screenwriter or director would have to be fulfilling the duty of adapting one of DeLillo’s works. If done at least adequately, any filmmaker is obliged to at least some brilliant satire with the great authors, sophisticated ideas about human nature and societies disturbing cores hidden within. However, if ill-conceived, execution can run the risk of feeling overstuffed with its dense ideas and grim plotting. It holds ideas of vast consumerism, America’s roots to fascism, and how we deal with Nonetheless, the film will at the very least hold some shades of brilliance and genius. This appears to be the case in Noah Baumbach’s latest film. White Noise, which holds hints of greatness that falls short on many levels. Showing clear signs of holding a lot of the same quibbles as David Cronenberg’s 2012 Don DeLillo flawed adaptation of Cosmopolis, White Noise will certainly find some champions but will leave many divided with its half-baked ideas and execution.

While more successful than Cosmopolis, with which Cronenberg brought his own sensibilities and showed how a DeLillo vision would look in his mostly verbose setting of a limousine and a bizarre confrontation between its billionaire CEO and his disgruntled former employee, Cronenberg’s vision felt very hermetic, where Baumbach’s feels more cinematic in its first two acts. Filled with rich production values that recreate the 1980s to very vivid details, along with impressive set-pieces, and rich satire about a family living in a rural community on the cusp, during, and after a bizarre catastrophe. With verbose dialogue, Baumbach delivers the dialogue nearly verbatim, making the delivery feel both literary and theatrical.

With a successful career of mostly dialogue-driven offbeat comedies about misanthropic outsiders, most of Baumbach’s films were distinctive on its own. Raging from Kicking and Screaming to The Squid and the Whale, all the way to Frances Ha and his 2019 masterpiece Marriage Story, Baumbach easily positioned himself as a modern-day Woody Allen with his comedies. His latest film is unlike anything he has done before. Ambitious and audacious, Baumbach’s latest vision should be commended for its efforts. Buambach goes for a big swing at attempting to elevate himself as an artist. but sadly, it comes across more as an elated intellectual exercise than a successfully reverent adaptation of DeLillo’s 1985 dystopian novel.

The film’s setting, a small college down in the mid 80s, has the tone and feel of Reagan Americana. The type of family home we recall from 80s movies and sitcoms. We are introduced to an everyday American family called the Gladney’s. We are introduced to Professor Jack Gladney (Adam Driver), who works at a local community college where he teaches Hitler studies in the most unsubtle of satires. Jack is very deeply in love with his wife, Babette (Greta Gerwig), who both have children from other marriages, and there is a sardonic tone that is utilized with the 80s movie aesthetics of mostly oranges, reds, purples and yellows that add to the 80s movie vibes. As Jack teaches Hitler studies, he never teaches about the history of Hitler.

Jack can’t speak German, and just he discusses the dictator’s psychology and downtrodden soul in what led to his fascism. If anything, it becomes a class about the cult of personality, and you can see Jack idolizing the power in his class as he shows old reels of Hitler behind the projector. Jack even dresses like a guru to class, showing satire of how college courses are in some ways like a spectacle onto themselves. This leads to an amusing scene of a dual theatrical lecture where Jack and fellow professor colleague Murray (Don Cheadle,) who studies Elvis Presley, they both exchange the origins of Hitler and Elvis’ upbringing which both include single moms with dogs, in which this superfluous scene is rift faithfully from the novel that will make any DeLillo fan vividly rejoice.

Back home, we learn more about Jack and Babette. She secretly pops unmarked pharmaceutical pills, and they have three children from different marriages. The oldest is Denis (Raffey Cassidy), the younger sister Steffi (May Nivola), who is Bobette’s daughters; and Heinrich (Sam Nivola), who is both Jack and Babette’s own son. Heinrich is a load of knowledgeable while Denis is very inquisitive, which leads to deep anxiety.

The theme of the fear of death was a deep theme and it hovers in each of the three chapters during the films 2-hour 15-minute running time. The first chapter is ignoring it as we consume ourselves to death; we tend to ignore it and think of it. In the stories second act, titled “The Airborne Toxic Event,” the characters are potentially at risk of dying after a train crash at the sound sends deadly chemicals and fumes into the car. The whole family begins to panic, but Jack remains calm and attempts to reassure the family that they aren’t at risk, and they should stay home in hopes the toxic fumes pass them by in a different direction.

Eventually the Gladney’s seek evacuation, they get in their 80s station wagon, and find they are low on fumes amid a traffic jam that echoes Godard’s Weekend and even a Spielberg movie like War of the Worlds. It also allows Baumbach to showcase some of his most major bravura set-pieces of his career, and for the most part he succeeds. It involves Jack driving through corn fields, getting their car stuck in the river, and discovering how computers have the technology with simulations to gauge just how long Jack could possibly live if he was indeed exposed to the cloud.

After the second act abruptly changes over the third, the film tends to lose its technical and dramatic impact. The film becomes even more verbose with talky monologs and heated exchanges, and the direction becomes less impressive than the first two acts. The tonal shifts are also all over the place as the film reaches its climax that feels ill-advised. There is a lot of marital drama in the third act, but Greta Gerwig’s dramatic acting holds some of it together. She is able to find nuance within her comical perm and all, even when Baumbach doesn’t necessarily juxtapose satire well with marital drama in this particular section.

While the film doesn’t completely derail, there are a lot of existential ideas crammed into the film. There are so many layers and plot outlines that are left out of the book, where Baumbach could have easily just made a mini-series out of it with greater results. Camera work by Cinematographer Loi Crawley (Vox Lux) shoots the film almost with a Spielbergian realism to it that borders between parody and hyper-reality. The production design by Jess Goncher is also top-notch; the use of A & P is extravagant, satirical, and the commentary on consumerism certainly echoes Godard’s Tout Va Bien. Danny Elfman’s score is also a highlight of the film that brings a swift energy and maintains a brisk pace within the first two chapters.

Many will probably be perplexed by the conclusion of the film as it drops on Netflix on December 30th. Overall, White Noise is a very overwhelming film to endure, but somehow it still leaves you feeling underwhelmed. The film’s approach to human nature is unflinching; this is what humankind continues to do in the modern world, where DeLillo’s work always felt post-modern. People take pills, consume, and find other distractions to shield them from their deepest existential fears and harshest anxieties that we would rather not discuss. While the third act is dissatisfying and nearly detrimental to the film, there is just no denying just how daring and morally instructive it is.

White Noise is currently playing in limited theaters and will be streaming on Netflix December 30th, 2022