Noah Baumbach’s latest feature for Netflix is an ambitious endeavor in adapting Don DeLillo’s famously “unfilmable” 1985 novel that, in the midst of all its colorful chaos, somehow is able to remain fairly faithful to the original work. In an explosive overload of visuals, White Noise operates as an amplified commentary of postmodern America that sharply satirizes capitalism, consumerism, and the existential dread of being alive.
White Noise follows the Gladneys, a blended nuclear family taken straight out of a Simpsons-esque image of ‘80s suburbia. The family’s patriarch is Jack (Adam Driver), a flamboyant professor of Hitler Studies at College-on-the-Hill, and Babette (Greta Gerwig) is his warm, though absent-minded and mysteriously self-medicating, wife. Together, they raise and take care of their children from their four previous marriages: Jack’s teenage son Heinrich (Sam Nivola, who embodies a young Jesse Eisenberg) and younger daughter Steffie (May Nivola), Babette’s preteen daughter Denise (Raffey Cassidy), and their shared youngest son, Wilder (Henry and Dean Moore).
The first act is a cacophony of visual and sonic mayhem. The film’s constant busy dialogue and sound serves as a physical representation of white noise, as if they were attempting to mimic the functions of a radio. The Gladneys move together in what appears like a choreographed tandem, and there is never a quiet moment since they are constantly in motion. Even if you can’t hear what everyone is chattering about in focus, their voices and overlapping conversations in the background provide almost a buzzing hum. Baumbach embraces this state of constant noise, and it is what drives the film forward.
White Noise transitions into a rendition of a disaster film during the second act, upending the Gladneys from their suburban mundanity. After a chemical spill causes a poisonous cloud to form (it is referred to as the “Airborne Toxic Event”), the town is forced into a panicked evacuation. Within the midst of this noise, the film’s commentary on mortality moves to center stage as the toxic air prompts existential thoughts among the crowd.
Jack and Babette harbor shared anxieties about death, though they deal with it in separate ways. Jack hides his fears and insecurities behind an over-compensation of academic intelligence, while Babette takes a mysterious pill to try and rid her overwhelming fear of death. While Driver is phenomenal at depicting Jack’s bizarre exuberance, it is Gerwig who stands out as the film’s brightest light, as Babette embodies a soft, maternal grace. In a stark contrast from Jack’s heightened presence, Gerwig approaches Babette with a measured restraint, and we as an audience can’t help but feel a degree of tenderness towards her.
Baumbach expertly crafts a highly experimental adaptation of DeLillo’s novel, chaotically borrowing a variety of genres into a singular film. However, White Noise does tend to feel like three different movies, as each section somehow feels separate from one another. What made White Noise’s first half so compelling was how it amplified American obsession with distraction and consumption as a way of hiding from their true existential fears. The third act morphs into what appears to be an homage to noir, and this tonal shift is where the film loses its original bite, perhaps even falling into the very spectacles it was attempting to criticize. Nevertheless, White Noise is an impressive filmmaking feat by Baumbach as it is consistently funny, layered, and complex. Above all else, if you are to take anything from the movie, make sure not to miss the credits.
