White Noise (2022)

This is a version of a review that aired on ABC Radio across regional Victoria on January 19, 2023.

(M) ★★

Director: Noah Baumbach.

Cast: Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola, May Nivola, Lars Eidinger.

"I know I'm dressed like a judge, but I'm not actually a judge."

To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unfightable foe, etc, etc.... In the case of some directors, the impossible dream is to film the unfilmable novel.

For David Cronenberg, it was William S Burroughs' Naked Lunch. For Terry Gilliam, Hunter S Thompson's Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas. The Wachowskis had a crack at David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Zach Snyder tackled Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' graphic novel Watchmen. And now Noah Baumbach has taken a stab at Don DeLillo's post-modern masterpiece White Noise.

While each of these were considered unfilmable for different reasons, some worked as films and some didn't (I'd say Fear & Loathing and Watchmen worked amazingly well, the others in varying degrees of 'less so'). Baumbach's largely faithful rendering of DeLillo's 1985 novel stumbles because of its fidelity to the source, showing up one of the key differences about the two mediums of book and film - what works on the page doesn't always work on the screen.

The film follows the Gladney family, led by death-obsessed parents Jack (Driver) and Babette (Gerwig). Jack is a lecturer who specialises in Hitler, while Babette is an energetic aerobics instructor, and over the course of their previous marriages they have accumulated four precocious children who are hungry for information.

Their lives are thrown into chaos when a train derailment sparks an "airborne toxic event", sending a plume of potentially deadly gas into the sky over their town.

Baumbach captures the absurdist satire of DeLillo's text, which pokes at the neuroses of comfortable middle America, including its obsession with death, propensity for misinformation, and fascination with supermarkets. These themes are explored with regular wit, and delivered in a barrage of overlapping dialogue that often segues off into non sequiturs and seemingly random diversions. While often funny, it soon becomes frustrating, and regularly sucks the pace out of the film.

While things kick off in the middle of White Noise's three sections (the airborne toxic event bit), the first one drags, while the third act sees the film grind in an uncomfortable and difficult direction. This final part feels like an entirely different movie with a much darker tone that sits at odds with part two's whimsical absurdity, which is like Catch-22 meets an '80s disaster movie.

Driver and Gerwig are valiant throughout, as is Cheadle who drops in for nonsensical asides. They obviously relish the odd dialogue and the requirement to play it straight, and if not for them the film would be an utter disaster. 

Instead it just feels like brave attempt at something different that ultimately falls flat. It's an experiment that's not without its moments, but its central themes end up feeling forced or unfulfilling. 

Some people find white noise soothing and listen to it to help them sleep. Others find it annoying. And that pretty much sums up White Noise.