White Noise (2022)......solidifies the Netflix reputation as the supreme patron of the unwatchable arts.....indulging wildly overrated filmmakers by funding their dismal, pretentious movies......(see BQ's 12/8/21 post on Jane Campion's woeful "The Power Of The Dog")
I'll start by at least crediting writer-director Noah Baumbach with a serious set of brass balls for the brazen ambition on display here.......trying to translate Don DeLillo's impossibly complex novel into coherent cinema.
And not an inexpensive feat by any means......the story includes a spectacular, cataclysmic train crash leading to a lethal chemical spill and the resulting toxic cloud to hover over a panicked, feeling populace.
But a mass evacuation apocalypse is only a small part of what Baumbach covers here.....the main theme focuses on our fear of the inevitable death that awaits all of us. As if contemplating the Grim Reaper's eventual visit isn't enough, the film also ponders the eternal quest to achieve love and happiness while living through an increasingly unhinged and dangerous world.
All of these modern calamities afflict an erudite community of academics (of "The College On The Hill"), led by Hitler specialist, Professor Jack Gladney (Adam Driver) and his equally popular colleague, Prof. Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle). Jack's riveting lectures analyze Hitler as the world's ultimate pop culture icon, while Murray hopes to apply the same treatment to Elvis. (The film opens with Murray dazzling his class with perceptive insights into our great love of movie car crashes, then later verbally dueling with Jack in a lecture-hall Hitler Vs. Elvis face-off)
Outside of class, Jack and Murray trade mile-a-minute metaphysical quips as they debate philosophies with their fellow profs......(sort of what David Mamet's real estate guys from "Glengarry Glen Ross" would sound like if they all had PhD's......even with subtitles on, the rapid fire lines will go flying over your ears....)
At home, Jack and his unstable, neurotic fourth wife Babette (Greta Gerwig) preside over a large blended brood of 4 kids.....all of whom, from toddler to teen, obsess over death and disaster (and zap out their own crafted one liners to each other even faster than the academics, so keep those subtitles on).
The family's non-stop, opinionated philosophizing collides with reality as that train crash-toxic spill occurs, sending them all into a desperate 'War Of The Worlds' type evacuation along with the rest of the town......(although here it's played mostly for satirical laughs, with the pedantic Jack always the last one to comprehend how absurdly bad things are getting....)
Once the emergency subsides and everyone's back home, Jack and Babette can return to this movie's main business at hand......the contemplation of death. That delightful topic, among other things, weighed heavily enough on Babette's mind for her to start poppin' an unknown, experimental drug.
Jack's tried to figure out what she's taking, where she got it and why almost since the film began......and his relentless hunt leads himself and his wife into a long night of absurdly comic revelations.
Really, I'm exhausted and annoyed even remembering how this film wanders about, so proud of itself for spewing out its grandiose, overblown ideas in chunks of incomprehensible overlapping dialogue. And irony of ironies, the now famously talked out final credits sequence struck me as its most perfectly realized act of self-adoration.
That scene, taking place in a supermarket so vast and well-stocked, it looks big enough have its own zip code, neatly sums the entire 136 minute film with......wait for it.....a dance number. We all fear death and what's the best way we know to keep that fear in check so we can go on with our lives?
Buy stuff! Nothing heals existential, agonized fear like a full shopping cart.
And now you don't need to suffer through yet another extravagant, ostentatious 1 star (*) exercise in cinematic culture-vulture-ism. You can however, easily enjoy the supermarket dance number on YouTube...the only thing worth seeing in this film. Happy to be be of service!
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