White Noise
classified 15Please note: This was screened in Dec 2022
Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s ‘unfilmable’ cult novel is a wonderfully idiosyncratic dark comedy starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig.
How best to describe the indescribable White Noise? It’s a film about nothing and everything – about life, death and the nuclear family; it grapples with nuclear reactions, mysterious medicines and the sacred space of the supermarket. Driver’s Jack Gladney, a four-times married college professor, leads an ordinary life – or as ordinary as one’s life can be when you’re a pioneer in the field of Hitler studies but have only just started learning German. Joined by an all-star cast playing family, friends and co-workers, including Gerwig, Don Cheadle, Jodie Turner-Smith and Lars Eidinger, Driver’s anti-hero finds himself on a journey to conquer his over-powering fear of death, with some very unexpected results.
Fans of Baumbach will delight in yet another sharp and comic look at human relationships. But White Noise sees the writer-director playing with genre and form in new ways, creating a film that’s both a love letter to DeLillo’s book and Baumbach’s most ambitious and surreal project to date.