{"id":682,"date":"2023-01-06T14:08:37","date_gmt":"2023-01-06T14:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/?p=682"},"modified":"2024-01-04T14:09:36","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T14:09:36","slug":"review-white-noise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/?p=682","title":{"rendered":"Review: White Noise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After screening a film to his students, one character in White Noise<\/em> jovially informs his audience that \u2018There is a wonderful, brimming sense of innocence \u2013 and fun\u2019. Unfortunately, Noah Baumbach\u2019s latest feature doesn\u2019t quite warrant the same glowing praises. Based on Don DeLillo\u2019s celebrated novel of the same name, Baumbach regular Adam Driver plays Jack Gladney, a revered history teacher who witnesses his college take a turn for the worst as it experiences what a title card describes as an \u2018Airborne Toxic Event\u2019. Chaos ensues, and his family fall into increasing turmoil as apocalypse approaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

My current knowledge of the Baumbach cannon is quite limited, with Marriage Story<\/em> (loved it) and The Dead Don\u2019t Die<\/em> (not so much) being my only knowledge so far. I\u2019m also not familiar with DeLillo\u2019s postmodern work, whose source material the film has been criticised for sticking to so closely. From what I\u2019ve seen so far from Baumbach\u2019s oeuvre, his whimsical worlds, indie tendencies, eccentric characters and popping visuals mirror the aesthetics of Wes Anderson. And there\u2019s certainly a lot to enjoy on the visual front; Gladney\u2019s kitchen alone is a collage of bright shades, and the supermarket (more on that later) has enough groovy tones going on to make your eyes go square. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of viewing, White Noise<\/em> features various screenings of films, mostly showcased by Gladney during lectures, but never really makes any deeper statements of our viewing processes. There are plenty of films out there discussing this subject (Wim Wender\u2019s The State of Things <\/em>is a decent example, and Nope<\/em> is a far better one), but Baumbach doesn\u2019t bother to suggest anything more than surface-level observations. The film, in a similar fashion to The Dead Don\u2019t Die<\/em>, can never quite decide whether it wants to be a quirky comedy or a serious drama. The intimate, drama that made Marriage Story<\/em> so engaging is hampered here by an overcrowded, poorly characterised ensemble of faces. While directors like Wes Anderson can generally pull off moments of intense drama or pathos by employing them sparingly within a singular section of his films, White Noise<\/em> flits back and forth between tones so much that it often becomes irritating. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s not to say that it doesn\u2019t have enjoyable comedic moments though. It\u2019s hard not to appreciate the deadpan humour of Driver\u2019s exasperated father figure as he calmly drives his family through a field of corn onto a road shortly after saving his car from submerging into a river, politely acknowledging a fellow driver for allowing him to join a queue of seemingly endless traffic. He\u2019s also pretty funny during a later scene when he blankly considers a man\u2019s large size in the supermarket (again, more on that later). The film can\u2019t quite meld moments of humour with the abstract themes it tries to convey. At the end of the day though, it\u2019s pretty refreshing to watch something this goofy and experimental in the cookie cutter world of franchises and superhero films.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Onto that supermarket scene, specifically the final one, where characters suddenly burst into song and the sequence becomes a smorgasbord of colour and interpretative dance akin to an elaborate OK GO video. That\u2019s certainly a spectacle to behold. Cinematographer David Neumann, who also worked with Baumbach on Marriage Story, employed a novel process of using vegetables and cereal to help inform movements, with one character invoking a compelling atmosphere with the use of an indiscriminate box of cookies. Overall, it\u2019s an ambitious project that doesn\u2019t quite stick the landing. Clean-up on aisle 2? Perhaps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After screening a film to his students, one character in White Noise jovially informs his audience that \u2018There is a wonderful, brimming sense of innocence \u2013 and fun\u2019. Unfortunately, Noah Baumbach\u2019s latest feature doesn\u2019t quite warrant the same glowing praises. Based on Don DeLillo\u2019s celebrated novel of the same name, Baumbach regular Adam Driver plays Jack Gladney, … <\/p>\n

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