Rumore bianco

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.