Rumore bianco

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).

This film has some hilarious one liners and twisted distortions of reality. The first act had me so intrigued I was gripped. Then I was confused. Then I couldn't decide if it was a comedy intentionally or not.

The reality is this film doesn't quite know what it is, and if you think it's going to go somewhere or wrap anything up at the end then you are dead wrong.

Weird for weirds sake is the name of the game. Think of a psychedelic trip by someone who likes the smell of their own farts and decided to write it down.

A future cult classic in the making and I'm sure many people will revere this film for years to come; rewatching it for it's one liners and oddities. For me however one baffling, confusing watch is enough to last a lifetime.

I don't know how to describe this film, but it almost feels like watching 3 different films. It started like a parody of dead poet society, then follows up by a parody of war of the world, then a parody of unfaithful. And it seems like there's no correlation between these sequences.

Yes, i'm aware White Noise is a satire of a supposedly average american family dealing with mundane troubles of death, live, love blah blah blah. Yes, i know it's based on a novel. No, i haven't read the novel. But seeing this film as is, and for whatever this film trying to be, i don't find it entertaining. Most of the humorous aspects are cringe.

4/10.

It's a 'surrealism film' , but not really.

As someone who didn't read the book the movie is based on, i will say that i did not connect with this movie or the characters. Am ok with not connecting with characters but the characters in this movie are hard to understand which is odd because they talk and talk (usually at 100 miles an hour and over each other) so you think they would be all out in the open but it was like a wall between them and me. Like i completely failed to understand what it was that the author was saying about the world or the country when he wrote the book. Though i assume that the book was making some sort of commentary about the state of affairs because this movie feels somewhat too large in scale to just be a movie about coming to term with mortality and the difficulties that can arise in a marriage. Like the movie isn't bad but what are you? I will watch it again when it comes out on Netflix to try and see it with fresher eyes but if the purpose of the movie is to frustrate people so much that we rewatch it multiple times, i will say that they will succeed.

It's funny when you encounter a film with so many likeable elements that simply never cohere into something that works. This film reminded me of "I Heart Huckabees" in that sense ... I enjoyed all the parts considered in isolation, but the film itself is decidedly less than the sum of it's parts.

The film is divided into three acts. We're introduced to star professor of Hitler Studies Adam Driver and his wife Greta Gerwig and their children (almost all from different spouses) in the first act, which gestures at parodying academia without really landing much.

In the middle act, a train crash causes the Airborne Toxic Event ... a cloud of poisonous chemicals that descends on town and causes the family to evacuate. This is the most successful part of the film, impressively staging the event like a darkly comedic disaster film.

The final act is ... a lot less clear and probably best not spoiled. It deals with our need to distract ourselves from the terrors of life with medicine and consumerism. It descends into talky meandering and is really only saved by a magnificent musical number over the end credits.

There's really a lot to like. I found it to be intermittently quite funny. The performances are great, especially Don Cheadle as a fellow professor trying to establish a specialization in Elvis Studies. It's a hugely ambitious film with a unique visual style. I only wish I could say I actually liked it.