‘White Noise’ Maxes Out on Maximalism While Poking at the Fear of Dying
To borrow from Beetlejuice: The Musical, this is a show about death. Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s postmodern novel White Noise, neatly lays out three stages of the never-ending march towards death that everyone must eventually come to terms with. The first stage is painfully average; a series of daily rituals. Jack Gladney (Adam Driver) goes to work, his ever-perfect wife Babette (Greta Gerwig) tends to their family and teaches calisthenics to the elderly, and their homelife is full to the brim with the white noise of children. The second stage rips the bandaid off of perfection, exposing the Gladneys to the reality of imminent death through a comically deranged airborne toxic event. The third stage seeks to examine whether normalcy can ever be regained after that sort of inciting incident. It’s a twisted exploration, one further compounded by Babette’s own bizarre brush with death.
White Noise is overstuffed, and there’s no avoiding that obvious flaw. The postmodern tilt of the novel is more palatable in written form than it is presented on screen, with all of its confounding intricacies. Some of the overlapping dialogue and off-the-wall plot points can be brushed aside as stylistic “white noise,” but it does otherwise work against the thesis of the film. Even still, the maximalism of White Noise is a welcome deviation from Baumbach’s typical fare, and the lunacy of the experience provides Driver and Gerwig with material that plays against their type. Driver delves into the absurdist humor that he honed in The Dead Don’t Die, thriving on the wickedly dry delivery of his dialogue and the larger-than-laugh physicality of the role. Together, Driver and Gerwig rekindle the on-screen chemistry they shared in Baumbach’s decade-old Frances Ha, but this time, with an entirely different twist.
Image via Netflix
Baumbach takes no prisoners in his farcical portrayal of fanaticism, using Jack’s occupation as a renowned voice in the studies of Hilter to draw sharp comparisons between larger-than-life figures in modern society, that thrive within a cult of death. The commentary comes from a wholly unexpected place, as Jack and his colleague Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle) deliver dueling lectures on Hitler and Elvis Presley to compare their contrasting cult followings. DeLillo’s novel is well-known for its exploration of the human relationship with consumerism, and Baumbach chooses to explore this similarly in his film by way of a grocery store lined in a colorful array of brands that largely feel like subliminal messaging to go out and buy Pringles and Doritos. The blatant marketing seemingly pokes at the idea of "toxic consciousness” which plagues modern society—as potently as the airborne toxic event strikes fear into the hearts of Jack’s family. The act of living is just a series of public pantomimes, following the predetermined rhythm of those around us—which returns, yet again at the grocery store, as the credits run. White Noise is as chaotic as reality is, yet it possesses layers of mundane moments that are bedazzled with unexpected incidents of the profane.
In the final act of the film, Jack and Babette find themselves wheeled towards the inner sanctum of a church, and the imagery mirrors both the unity of marriage and the eternal separation of death. Hands clasped together they look like newlyweds, yet laid out on their gurneys they look like the recently deceased. As the sun cascades through the lofty window, like a train’s light shining through at the end of the tunnel, it’s almost as though they have found heaven. Baumbach is as intentional with this imagery as he is with the foreshadowing of car crashes, which Professor Siskind so eloquently discusses at the start of the film. White Noise is smartly designed to telegraph every aspect of the film, yet it obscures the obvious with the white noise of it all. It’s only in hindsight that things start to unravel at the seams, exposing the deeper, darker symbolism behind its constructs.
Image via Netflix
White Noise is a true marvel in the way that it delivers on the unexpected, and Baumbach is brave for deviating so far from his typical form and fashion, to deliver something with such deep-seated meaning to it. This is not the crippling reality of a failing relationship like Marriage Story or the screwballish Mistress America, this is something new, fresh, and bizarre. Seldom do films manage to make an audience laugh at its absurdity, while equally making them squirm in their seats as they face the brutal reality of impending doom.
Final Verdict: B
