White Noise (2022)

Let's Face the Music and Dance

or

"That's a Little Stupid." "It's What Happens to Desperate People."

White Noise (noun) Merriam-Webster

1 : a: a heterogeneous mixture of sound waves extending over a wide frequency range

compare pink noise

b: a constant background noise

especially : one that drowns out other sounds

2 : meaningless or distracting commotion, hubbub, or chatter

 

Wikipedia page of White Noise (novel) sub-section: Analysis

"White Noise explores several themes that emerged during the mid-to-late twentieth century, e.g., rampant consumerism, media saturation, novelty academic intellectualism, underground conspiracies, the disintegration and reintegration of the family, human-made disasters, and the potentially regenerative nature of violence. The novel's style is characterized by a heterogeneity that utilizes "montages of tones, styles, and voices that have the effect of yoking together terror and wild humor as the essential tone of contemporary America."

 

One could mistake Noah Baumbach's film of White Noise as a meditation on current times with pandemics, conspiracy theories, and just plain crazy people...if the film weren't based on a Don DeLillo novel written in 1985. Funny how really good writers "get it right." Not funny how the human collective keeps making the same mistakes over and over and over (and over)...as if we were crazy or something.

The protagonists are the family of J.A.K. Gladney (Adam Driver, ubiquitously), an academic at "The College On the Hill" teaching an "Advanced Nazism" course—he's not "pro," he's "con" but does deep-dive analysis on the self-proclaimed "Thousand Year Reich" (they got that wrong, too!)—and his analyses (and those of his peers at the college) sound an awful lot like that Wikipedia "analysis" of DeLillo's novel. His wife, Babette—call her "Baba"—(Greta Gerwig)—"We're each other's fourth"—has (as a colleague notes) "important hair," and focuses on self-improvement, running the steps of the college's stadium and taking "posture classes." They have four kids from four marriages, but seem to be settling in to the chaos, despite the constant conversation, the randomness, and the clash of personalities and interests.

They are white, liberal, self-satisfied and pretentious, the latter being honed to a fine art, as Gladney's lectures on the rise of Nazism border on performance (Driver is brilliant at this) and life is good. It's so good, that any trivial subject can be analyzed and micro-scoped for nuance and monlogued over where, if done right, it can scrape raw hints of guilt and self-loathing. The inherent capacity for human beings to be fascinated by car crashes, for instance—as is lectured about by Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle) in the opening sequence. We, as a species, seem to be drawn to disaster.

 

Well, as the saying goes: "Watch Out What You Wish For." In fact, that sounds like a lecture, too.

White Noise is split into three parts, the first of which is:

1. Waves and Radiation

It serves as an introduction to the characters when times are good and we see them at their best and most convivial. Things are so good that one can be a bit jejune and deprecating about it, while feeling superior at the same time. But, things are simmering under the surface and all it will take will be some catastrophic event to test the rigor of the self-satisfied complacency of the extended nuclear family.

2. The Airborne Toxic Event

Some rando truck driver carrying explosive chemicals is reaching for his bottle of Jack Daniels, distracted just enough that he doesn't see the guard-rail come down for a crossing train—that is also carrying explosive chemicals—and plows into it, derailing it, and causing a massive explosion with a resulting cloud of burning schmutz, that causes the evacuation of nearby towns.

The Gladneys make a run for it to one of the camp-grounds stipulated as evacuation sites for the populace. But, so is everyone else, so the resulting snake of traffic keeps them in place for a much longer time than one can be complacent about. They are refugees from suburbia, displaced with as few comforts as they can carry. It's a far-cry from the comforts they are used to, with a looming chemical waste that can kill you if you're not sheltered in place. Of course, there are theories and fears and resentments that bubble up among the many strangers lumped in together without the comforts of drywall and fences.

For J.A.K.—that's "Jack"—this merely exacerbates his growing unease of death which haunts his dreams with sheeted figures in his bed that have replaced his wife and which strangle him with scarred hands, granting him no peace. And, there is the fear that the toxins have poisoned him, as well, since he left the safety of the get-away car for the 2½ minutes it took to fill it up with gas. The government officials who analyze and herd the evacuees give little comfort ("You are not to leave the facility. That means if you come up to me later and ask 'Can I leave?' the answer will still be no"). By the time, they get home, J.A.K. is starting to obsess about his 2½ exposure and seeks medical advice. But, there's something wrong with Babette, too.

3. Dylarama

Well, you've got to have some surprises, so the less said the better. But, it wraps up a lot of things that have been brewing in Parts 1 and 2, concentrating on the domestic drama tilting the seemingly self-satisfied and stable Gladney house. 

Baumbach keeps things off-center with long takes without too much directorial show-boating, but making sure everything's paced briskly and usually with a comedic punctuation at the exit. The tone is set by a lush Danny Elfman score, that, at times, evokes Randy Newman's score for Baumbach's previous film. The performances are uniformly excellent and manage to make the characters less insufferable than they could be.

I loved it, but, then I tend towards the dark, finding it cheering (and probably as I also tend to the pretentious, finding it amusing). In fact, I was quite thrilled with it, having to recommend it heartily to whoever would hear it. Probably because in the course of a film with heavy themes and dour prospects, it is so optimistic.