Film Review — White Noise
★★☆☆☆
A college professor’s fear of death intensifies when a nearby chemical disaster forces his family to evacuate.
Lending weight to the argument that its notoriously unadaptable source material is truly that, White Noise admirably tackles the daunting task of capturing Don DeLillo’s classic Americana satire, but buckles under the weight of its sprawling and increasingly unwieldy ideas.
You can’t help but admire Noah Baumbach’s audacity in choosing this as his follow-up to 2019’s excellent Marriage Story. It’s a wild misfire for sure, but one that showcases the filmmaker’s surprising creative dexterity. Turns out Baumbach is a pretty capable action director, has a keen eye for horror, can recreate that snuggly Spielberg magic, and — in the film’s major highlight — direct the shit out of an elaborate supermarket dance number, set to an LCD Soundsystem banger.
Just call him Mister Baumbastic.
The problem isn’t the visuals. It’s not the performances, although the intentionally pretentious dialogue sometimes borders on unbearable. It definitely doesn’t lie with Danny Elfman’s score, a later career highlight that pairs perfectly with the farcical mayhem on screen.
The problem is that White Noise is too much of the wrong stuff. Boiled down it’s essentially three stories that don’t coalesce; a frustrating experience that, aside from a couple of modest chuckles and some pleasing surface-level visuals, lacks a discernible entry point for anyone other than those who pretend to enjoy superficial existentialism and pseudo-intellectual babble.
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