Movie review: White Noise

'White Noise' is set in a fictional middle-America university town, where disaster strikes in the form of a toxic chemical spill.

White Noise (136 mins), now streaming on Netflix

Written and directed by Noah Baumbach

White noise. It apparently drowns out interfering sounds, calms the overly busy brain, helps you to tune out and can help people with ADHD.

The farcical opening scenes of White Noise (Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story, 2019) feel like a film with ADHD. The setting is a fictional middle-America university town featuring a noisy blended family, a vast supermarket, portrayed as a mecca for the nourishment of body and mind, and the College On The Hill, where Elvis studies and Hitler studies are on equal footing and media studies reveal the tricks behind apparently real footage. It’s a crazy but intriguing introduction.

Jack (Adam Driver, Marriage Story), husband, father, shopper and university lecturer, is the film’s anchor. He’s looked up to, despite not being a leader. He’s a bit of a fraud, too: teaching Hitler studies without being a German speaker bothers him. He’s a caring husband and father, but he’s useless when it comes to noticing something’s wrong with his wife Babette (Greta Gerwig) and useless at saving the family when an environmental catastrophe looms.

By ignoring the big things happening inside and outside the home, perhaps Jack’s actually using white noise to hold things together, but there’s no escaping the idea that too much white noise is a bad thing. Luckily, Jack eventually realises he has to stop talking and take some action.

Noah Baumbach’s screenplay is fast-paced, insightful and witty. It’s well-suited to Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, both super-skilled at deadpan delivery. Baumbach based the script on a highly regarded 1985 book of the same name by multi-award-winning writer Don DeLillo, whose voice remains strong in the film, contributing to the script’s vibrance.

White Noise is a reminder of the fears many had when the pandemic struck about being in uncharted territory. Audiences will relate to the characters as they desperately look for ways to cope with impending doom, aware that nobody really knows what to do about the imminent threat to survival.

One of the film’s themes is that nobody deserves to be idolised; that people are easily sucked in. In a lecture given by Jack and his colleague Murray (Don Cheadle), far-fetched parallels are drawn between Elvis and Hitler, focusing on their similar mothering. The overly-impressed students become just another irrational, idolising crowd, while Murray and Jack bask in ill-deserved glory. White noise might have helped the students to think better, but won’t help them when it comes to passing exams.

It’s an existential horror with more say about escaping disaster than Bird Box (2018), an apocalyptic satire with a better script than Don’t Look Up (2021), and a campus comedy with better ideas than The Chair (2021).

White Noise follows a fairly long line of arthouse movies chosen to open the Venice Film Festival. Their directors’ vision matters more than box office potential. Noah Baumbach’s vision has a particularly relevant aspect to it - optimism despite chaos. In Don DeLillo’s words: “Out of some persistent sense of large-scale ruin, we keep inventing hope.”

Highly recommended

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