White noise refers to constant, meaningless, distracting background noise, and in his prize-winning 1985 novel, author Don DeLillo used the metaphor to paint a rich word-picture of the search for meaning in an America littered with the trash of pop culture and unfettered consumerism. Writing the screenplay during the pandemic, Noah Baumbach uncannily captures the spirit of the time, which after all was less than 40 years ago – but much has changed and it is a challenge even for this talented auteur to update the neuroses and traumas of those days.
White Noise the film is funny, fast-paced and full of absurd drama that ruefully reminds us we live in an even crazier world than the characters do. As a small-town college prof and his wife, the well-cast Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig capture the zeitgeist and manage to turn a lot of bumpy literary dialogue into meaningful exchanges, making it sure this Netflix release will find its audience. It proved a popular yet critically savvy choice to open Venice – the first time a Netflix film has ruled opening night at a major film festival since Beckett opened Locarno last year – especially in view of the fact that Baumbach’s celebrated Marriage Story, also starring Driver, bowed in Venice competition in 2019 before moving on to its six Oscar noms.
The tone of high irony is set in the opening scenes, as riveting as they are appalling, in a montage of spectacular car accidents excerpted from films. In an erudite voiceover, Prof. Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle, deadpan perfection) extols their realism, which he claims exemplifies American progress, whatever the casualties. As a caravan of family station wagons pulls up to the College-on-the-Hill, bringing the freshman class to their first semester, Prof. Jack Gladley (Driver) looks on in satisfaction in his dark glasses and black academic robes, an affectation he abandons when he returns home to his wife Babette/Baba (Gerwig) and their four children by four marriages. The warm chaos of the big house is rendered by strongly etched kids and constantly overlapping dialogue that is a challenge to keep up with. Cinematographer Lol Crawley keeps the shadows away in these early scenes of family life, lulling the viewer into a dangerous sit-com complacency.
Jack’s teaching shtick is even more cringe-worthy and ridiculous: he is professor of Hitler studies at the college, an incredibly popular course with the undergrads that has given him worldwide status, in spite of the fact he doesn’t speak a word of German. In an early tour-de-force scene that will be a must in all future Adam Driver anthologies, he gives a rousing double lecture-performance with Murray (who is out to corner Elvis studies) before the awed student body and faculty. The trashing of American academia is pretty unforgettable as the two kowtow to the worst of low-brow and turn a dreadfully serious subject like Hitler’s domination over Europe into cheesy pop culture.
If there is an iota of seriousness in Jack’s Hitler studies, it is in how the Third Reich’s death cult overshadows and somehow placates the prof’s own fear of death and dying, an obsession that powers much of the action. To his surprise he learns that Baba, who he had believed was always completely open and honest with him, has it, too, and has been hiding it. When teenage daughter and house busybody Denise (a strong Raffey Cassidy) discovers Baba is secretly taking mysterious pills, it leads to a confession that Gerwig and Driver deliver hysterically.
And it’s not just the parents who quake at the thought of a ghostly grim reaper coming for them: Denise certainly is developing a nervous syndrome and communicating her anxieties to the younger kids. Their young teen Heinrich (Sam Nivola) is more level-headed, but his interest in science takes him into preoccupying territory. It’s a family neurosis that, seen today through the lens of a gun-bloated, politically divided America that is increasingly violent and dangerous, can be related to. And when Jack, hearing the non-facts exchanged by his family members, remarks “the family is the source of all misinformation”, it can easily be translated into today’s fake news.
The film’s gripping central part begins with a wild collision between a massive truck laden with lethal chemicals and a freight train full of explosive substances. The train wreck yields a “toxic airborne event” which, in the form of a huge black cloud, causes a general evacuation of the sleepy Ohio rural area where the Gladleys live, with consequent misadventures in the family station wagon that ring a lot of bells, somewhere between an environmental disaster and the mass hysteria of the early pandemic. The Gladleys’ flight through gridlocked freeways, Boy Scout campgrounds and even an off-road excursion that turns bad is terrifyingly grotesque. Here the camerawork reaches expressive heights as lightning sparkles in the toxic black cloud at night, a spectacle at once awe-inspiring and dismaying and heightened still further by Danny Elfman’s striking orchestral soundtrack.
It is telling that Baumbach’s screenplay, which seems to stick closely to the novel, omits one late key scene. After a scathing tirade against religion by a scary German nun, DeLillo allowed for at least a slight possibility of grace or something transcendental. Apparently our times are too dark for that.
Director: Noah Baumbach
Screenplay: Noah Baubach based on Don DeLillo’s novel
Cast: Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola, May Nivola, Jodie Turner-Smith, André L. Benjamin, Lars Eidinger
Producers: Noah Baumbach, David Heyman, Uri Singer
Cinematography: Lol Crawley
Editing: Matthew Hannam
Production design: Jess Gonchor
Costume design: Ann Roth
Music: Danny Elfman
Sound: Lisa Pinero
Production companies: NGBB Pictures, Heyday Films
World Sales: Netflix
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Competition)
In English
138 minutes
