Noah Baumbach’s WHITE NOISE is an ambitious failure. It’s a train/car wreck that you cannot stop watching. There are some extremely likable sections of this movie, especially “Chapter 2 – The Airborne Toxic Event.” However, for the most part, Don DeLillo’s classic 80s novel proves unfilmable. It’s a damn shame since this is Baumbach’s best technically made film.
So what the hell is WHITE NOISE? On the surface, it’s a bunch of suburban characters saying a lot while not saying anything, which is a microcosm of how society, especially families, disseminates false information. It’s also an exploration of death being our one commonality as a human, suburban life, and, strangely, a suspenseful natural disaster film. It reminded me a lot of Charlie Kaufman’s SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK, and I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS. Each of those films had meaningful individual moments, but they didn’t come together to tell a cohesive narrative.
Rather than continue down the rabbit hole of failures in this film, let’s focus on the top three things that soar and the top three quotes:
Top Three Things That Soar:
- The Airborne Toxic Event – The mid-section is a brilliant disaster film captured in under thirty minutes. Audiences could almost skip the entire first chapter and go to this section.
- Elvis vs. Hitler – Watching the verbose debate between Jack (Adam Driver) and Murray (Don Cheadle) about Hitler/Elvis’s mother-love is sheer lunacy.
- New Body Rhumba – All hail LCD Soundsystem for providing a new song that allows for an end-credit dance sequence that’s delightfully rewatchable.
Top Three Quotes:
- “Sounds like a boring life. I hope it lasts forever.”
- “Facts threaten our happiness and security.”
- “Whatever relaxes you is dangerous.”
It doesn’t matter if “anyone pays attention to what is actually happening” in WHITE NOISE since the sum of its disjointed parts makes for a non-boring mess of a failed film that will surely become a cult classic. While some of the moments will stick with audiences long after seeing it, the film is too weird, uneven, and long to recommend unless you like watching car crashes as entertainment.
It’s in limited release now and will premiere on Netflix on December 30th.
