Noah Baumbach’s “WHITE NOISE”
A movie review by Dennis D. McDonald
White Noise is by no means a perfect movie. It goes out of its way to be quirky. Some parts appear to be improvised on the spot by its very talented director, cast, and crew.
Yet I found it consistently entertaining, funny, and thought-provoking.
Various plot lines (family miscommunication, academic vacuousness, “natural” disaster, infidelity) receive attention. While the theme that appears intended to hold all this together – how people respond to the knowledge of their inevitable deaths – does not totally succeed, maybe it does in the novel which I have not read.
The movie does present how we humans create our own realities around dealing with the rigors of life (such as emotional trauma and the prospect of inevitable death). Shopping and consumerism are highlighted. This culminates in the spectacularly ridiculous musical number that runs under the end credits. Some will view this segment as celebrating the crazy culture we have created. Others will view it as “whistling past the graveyard. Whatever.
One view of White Noise’s “Airborne Toxic Event”
The silliness of some academic posturing is also highlighted via Don Cheadle and Adam Driver’s extraordinary verbal duel comparing Elvis’ and Hitler’s mother relationships. Other plot lines behave more like misfires including much of the final segment’s motel encounter.
Still, I found this weird film to be wonderfully entertaining both story wise and in how Adam Driver‘s and Greta Gerwig‘s bedroom conversations entertainingly play out. There’s some very clever dialog here as these two play a cat and mouse game around infidelity and drug dependency; it’s charming, funny, and sad – sometimes at the same time.
Finally, kudos to production design, special effects, and photography; they are amazingly creative and effective, especiallythe disaster sequences (see the “airborne toxic event” image above).
Review copyright (c) 2023 by Dennis D. McDonald