White Noise

I have to admire Noah Baumbach for following up Marriage Story with White Noise. Apart from each starring Adam Driver and centring on a family, the two couldn't be more different. One's a deeply emotional, easy to follow, and very moving family drama, and the other one... well, it's White Noise.

It's got a premise that's hard to describe. There's a disaster which causes a great deal of panic for much of the film, but it's not the film's entire focus. In some ways, it feels a little like three short films all starring the same characters, and it's a bit hard to figure out how it all connects sometimes.

The movie reminded me of other wild, unpredictable, all over the place movies in recent years, like Inherent Vice and Under the Silver Lake, but both of those felt like they had more method to their madness, and were consistent with their craziness.

White Noise definitely isn't bad though. Adam Driver is as great as always, there were some funny parts, and much of the first hour or so is quite exciting. I'd say it's the final 45 minutes that have a few parts that drag, but then again, it builds to a good final scene, so make of that what you will.

I look forward to seeing what people say when this drops on Netflix (but who knows whether it'll get much attention - it can be hard to predict what will trend). I have no shame in admitting that maybe some of the discussion will help me understand the parts of this film that I didn't quite get from watching it just now.

(Also, if the Academy Awards don't nominate the LCD Soundsystem song written for this movie for Best Original Song, then they're cowards and/or they have no ears).

It's obvious a lot of reviewers of this film had no idea what to expect because of having no idea what is in the book it's based on. I'm not criticizing; there's certainly an argument for the fact that an adaptation should work on its own, even if you're unfamiliar. I'm not objective because I've read the book, and I thought it was pretty stunning. As an adaptation, the movie replicated the experience I had reading it-which is what I wanted and expected.

I expected stylized dialogue and characters, with wildly surreal, satirical plot points united by theme rather than subject. If you don't understand what exactly unites the movie's acts and their progression, I struggle to explain it without getting overly spoilery but would suggest deeper investigation and checking out the novel, which is superb. To me, it makes sense. The interaction of the intensely personal with the broadly circumstantial creates a framework to discuss the capital I "Issue" that every human must deal with-and the ways we choose to cope, together and separately.

What I applaud Noah and his actors for is making me care. The book has a brilliant writing style, but its surreality failed to give me some of the visceral sucker punches managed by Adam and Greta in particular.

This film is not going to be for everyone, and I suspect its cast and crew was well aware of this. It's self-consciously extremely intellectual, long, and strange, with humor as dry as a desert. And it's purposefully unsettling. I would argue that it very much should be. It's making us look at something we all face daily-whether we like it or not.

Most of the reviews that I have read thus far were negative, or a bit overly kind. The low rating is likely due to people going out for a light story, expecting to see a disaster action flick or end of the world comedy. This is essentially a reflection on mans fear of his own mortality, or perhaps more specifically on a certain subcultures fixation on their own impending end. If you take the movie as a series of reflections on that idea, and most of the characters as representations of certain personality types, perspectives and ideologies, then it all makes a lot of sense. And, it is pretty damn (darkly) funny as well. Enjoy.

For the first hour of White Noise, I found myself very entertained. But for the second half I found myself incredibly bored. They felt like two separate films. If the first half had just been the whole film. I probably would have have given this film an 8. Or possibly a 9. It goes from being an apocalyptic family satire, to a revenge tale. I believe Noah Baumbach didn't even know what exactly he was going for. White Noise was average. The two aspects holding me back from giving it a 4 are again the first half and another stellar performance from Adam Driver. Nowhere near as good as Marriage Story. Then again they are very different films.

What exactly does this film want to achieve? Why should the weird and sometimes paranoid look or angle of a director or script writer be something worth mentioning, let alone made into a movie? I honestly tried to see this movie with as clear a mind as I can... Is there something wrong with me? Is there some secret dimension hidden in this film that I (40 years old) can't grasp? Where is the director looking forward to? Amuse us? Entertain us? Drive us crazy? The last one, he succeeded! What did I watch? A strange, motley family whose members' dialogues use pretentious expressions full of disjointed, meaningless words and a tendency to impress even the teenagers of the family with their knowledge and strange inclinations! Do us a favor... We are not so easy to get. 1/10 from me.