White NoiseYou don't shake a sleepwalker, but how do you rouse a world asleep? Maybe nothing can--not even impending doom. White Noise is an absurdist comedy and satire about a college professor and father named Jack (a.k.a. J. A. K.) Gladney (Adam Driver), who is morbidly afraid of death, along with his wife, Babette (Greta Gerwig). Living in the suburbs of Ohio circa 1984, Jack teaches "Hitler studies" at the College-on-the-Hill, which amounts to little more than prognosticating and performance posing as intellectualism. Meanwhile, his wife secretly takes an experimental drug called "Dylar". One day, a "billowing black cloud" transforms into a "toxic airborne event" and drives the Gladney family--along with the rest of their town--into evacuation. And just as they were about to have dessert, too...
|
|
White Noise is adapted for the screen by Noah Baumbach from the book of the same name by Don DeLillo. As with many of the best satires, its tone and content feels achingly familiar yet ramped up to the extreme. Despite being set almost forty years in the past, elements of the mixed family dynamic, of a prescription drug crisis, of intellectual posturing, and yes, a mass airborne threat that forces facemasks makes White Noise something we can all uncomfortably laugh at. The film opens with a montage of car crashes and a lecture by Jack's colleague, Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle), on the social value these simulated disasters have in reaffirming American values. Murray later implores Jack to help him open an "Elvis studies" program at the college, owing to Jack's success with his class on Hitler. Both men's lectures are akin to something between a sermon and a TED Talk...but their performances represent a lot of sound and noise signifying nothing. Both of them, along with the rest of the college professors, wear outlandish outfits--Jack favors wearing his professor's robe with a pair of purple hippie sunglasses--and expound on gibberish over lunch in the cafeteria. And everyone calls one another "brilliant". Sounds like the kind of intellectual snobbery that has and is commonplace among the liberal arts. (Though not always, not even often, but nevertheless it is the kind that will always plant roots in institutions for "higher learning".) So we've satirized that subsection of society--check. What about suburban family life? Well, we've got that covered, too. Jack and "Baba" (Babette) have around five or six kids together, mostly from prior marriages. Don't worry if you can't keep straight who was born to who; I don't even think their parents can do that. Their interactions are fast-paced. Dialogue goes by like a speeding bullet (duck!), and is immensely hilarious the way something one character says is quickly misinterpreted by another in the verbal chaos. It has aspects of a screwball comedy, which for the first act of White Noise, the movie fundamentally is.
It is the second act of White Noise which tends to draw the most attention, and this is when the story takes its most apocalyptic turn. See, off in the distance, a lazy truck driver crashes into a train carting around some kind of pathogen--because reasons--and of course that toxin spews into the sky after the explosion that follows. News reports of dubious information trickle in, and the kids are glued to the radio to glean any nugget of information about the mysterious cloud. Will an air current coming down from Canada drive it toward their small community? Do reports that it cause "sweaty palms" and "nausea" (at least at first) mean that even though the suggestion of these symptoms provoke them in the listener, that those listeners are actually exposed? (Kinda like when every kind of symptom imaginable was linked to Covid not so long ago, and hysteria reigned.) Jack refuses to believe that the black plume of smoke in the distance will affect them, because tragedies and crashes only happen on TV, to other people. There is a massive irony here given his chosen area of academia, which deals with one history's greatest tragedies. But Jack is insulated from real-world tragedy, instead allowing anxiety over an abstract fear of death to occupy his thoughts. Babette talks about how a life of everyday routine is boring...but adds that she hopes that it will never change. How true for so many of us; and there is no shame in that. After all, each one of us wants to feel safe and secure. There is great comfort in that. But the truth is that sometimes this salve for the pain of reality can be numbing and makes us little more that children when confronted with a real crisis. We'd rather dive into our chili fried chicken and expound on cultural icons rather than do something meaningful or face the problem head on. (I'm no different, sitting here writing about a movie on Netflix.) But eventually, Jack is pressed to pack up his family into the station wagon and abandon their residence...only to be caught in gridlock traffic on the interstate en route to a camp for quarantine/sanctuary. The camp is commandeered by "Simuvac", an organization using this real-world example for mass evacuation for data in their future trial run. Yes, lots of "gosh, just like in real life" moments of irony like this can't help but bring a knowing smirk to the audience of White Noise. And after they are subsequently evacuated to a karate dojo in "Iron City", where they are kept for nine days, they return to their lives, where Jack and Murray can carry on philosophical discussions about the local A&P representing something between that state of being between "death" and "rebirth". The more things change...
It would be easy to think that the third act--titled "Dylarama"--would be content to sit still with the humorous idea that even a life-threatening tragedy (which Jack may or may not have been exposed to while pumping gas) couldn't shake these complacent consumers out of their reverie. But one of their daughters (not sure whose) named Denise (Raffey Cassidy) presses Jack to discover just what Dylar is, why Babette is taking it, and where she's getting it from. Jack tries her doctor, a colleague, and so on, and no one's ever heard of it. Eventually, he confronts Babette in arguably the only moment of genuine pathos in this otherwise absurdist comedy. She confesses that she was a part of a secret drug program she found out about in the tabloids. And although she was informed that this medication intended to treat her "fear of death" didn't work on her, she continued to secretly meet with the head of the program--who she calls "Mr. Gray" (Lars Eidinger)--in a hotel room and exchange sexual favors for the pills. To hide her shame, Babette stole Denise's ski mask to wear during the shameful act. So all of a sudden, Jack is confronted with a very real crisis that truly hits close to home--his wife's infidelity and drug addiction. He decides that he must kill Mr. Gray after Murray--in one of his long-winded diatribes--suggests that only killing can release one from the gripping fear of death. (And this is why you never listen to egomaniacal know-it-alls, ladies and gentlemen, so turn off CNN--or your media feed of choice--right now.) White Noise ends with a quiet moment of revelation between Jack and Babette. It is one of the few ones in the film, and it represents how these two people who had become so transfixed by the cliché trappings of domesticity have had a moment of clarity after all--following being treated for bullet wounds in a church run by a German atheist nun (Barbara Sukowa) of all places. And even though Jack, Babette, and the kids end up back at the supermarket when all is said and done--for a delightful end credits dance scene--this is less an admission of defeat but an awakening for them both. They have seen beyond Plato's Cave and the shadows dancing on the wall therein. They just appreciate these quieter moments more now. If only the same could be said for us all...but we'll get there eventually, one step at a time.
Recommended for: Fans of a comical and witty satire of contemporary life. Audiences for White Noise will undoubtedly identify with the lampooned subject matter in our own lives without reminder, and the dialogue is so whip-smart and engaging that even if one doesn't, that maple syrup substitute thick humor will make watching it a hoot nonetheless.
It is the second act of White Noise which tends to draw the most attention, and this is when the story takes its most apocalyptic turn. See, off in the distance, a lazy truck driver crashes into a train carting around some kind of pathogen--because reasons--and of course that toxin spews into the sky after the explosion that follows. News reports of dubious information trickle in, and the kids are glued to the radio to glean any nugget of information about the mysterious cloud. Will an air current coming down from Canada drive it toward their small community? Do reports that it cause "sweaty palms" and "nausea" (at least at first) mean that even though the suggestion of these symptoms provoke them in the listener, that those listeners are actually exposed? (Kinda like when every kind of symptom imaginable was linked to Covid not so long ago, and hysteria reigned.) Jack refuses to believe that the black plume of smoke in the distance will affect them, because tragedies and crashes only happen on TV, to other people. There is a massive irony here given his chosen area of academia, which deals with one history's greatest tragedies. But Jack is insulated from real-world tragedy, instead allowing anxiety over an abstract fear of death to occupy his thoughts. Babette talks about how a life of everyday routine is boring...but adds that she hopes that it will never change. How true for so many of us; and there is no shame in that. After all, each one of us wants to feel safe and secure. There is great comfort in that. But the truth is that sometimes this salve for the pain of reality can be numbing and makes us little more that children when confronted with a real crisis. We'd rather dive into our chili fried chicken and expound on cultural icons rather than do something meaningful or face the problem head on. (I'm no different, sitting here writing about a movie on Netflix.) But eventually, Jack is pressed to pack up his family into the station wagon and abandon their residence...only to be caught in gridlock traffic on the interstate en route to a camp for quarantine/sanctuary. The camp is commandeered by "Simuvac", an organization using this real-world example for mass evacuation for data in their future trial run. Yes, lots of "gosh, just like in real life" moments of irony like this can't help but bring a knowing smirk to the audience of White Noise. And after they are subsequently evacuated to a karate dojo in "Iron City", where they are kept for nine days, they return to their lives, where Jack and Murray can carry on philosophical discussions about the local A&P representing something between that state of being between "death" and "rebirth". The more things change...
It would be easy to think that the third act--titled "Dylarama"--would be content to sit still with the humorous idea that even a life-threatening tragedy (which Jack may or may not have been exposed to while pumping gas) couldn't shake these complacent consumers out of their reverie. But one of their daughters (not sure whose) named Denise (Raffey Cassidy) presses Jack to discover just what Dylar is, why Babette is taking it, and where she's getting it from. Jack tries her doctor, a colleague, and so on, and no one's ever heard of it. Eventually, he confronts Babette in arguably the only moment of genuine pathos in this otherwise absurdist comedy. She confesses that she was a part of a secret drug program she found out about in the tabloids. And although she was informed that this medication intended to treat her "fear of death" didn't work on her, she continued to secretly meet with the head of the program--who she calls "Mr. Gray" (Lars Eidinger)--in a hotel room and exchange sexual favors for the pills. To hide her shame, Babette stole Denise's ski mask to wear during the shameful act. So all of a sudden, Jack is confronted with a very real crisis that truly hits close to home--his wife's infidelity and drug addiction. He decides that he must kill Mr. Gray after Murray--in one of his long-winded diatribes--suggests that only killing can release one from the gripping fear of death. (And this is why you never listen to egomaniacal know-it-alls, ladies and gentlemen, so turn off CNN--or your media feed of choice--right now.) White Noise ends with a quiet moment of revelation between Jack and Babette. It is one of the few ones in the film, and it represents how these two people who had become so transfixed by the cliché trappings of domesticity have had a moment of clarity after all--following being treated for bullet wounds in a church run by a German atheist nun (Barbara Sukowa) of all places. And even though Jack, Babette, and the kids end up back at the supermarket when all is said and done--for a delightful end credits dance scene--this is less an admission of defeat but an awakening for them both. They have seen beyond Plato's Cave and the shadows dancing on the wall therein. They just appreciate these quieter moments more now. If only the same could be said for us all...but we'll get there eventually, one step at a time.
Recommended for: Fans of a comical and witty satire of contemporary life. Audiences for White Noise will undoubtedly identify with the lampooned subject matter in our own lives without reminder, and the dialogue is so whip-smart and engaging that even if one doesn't, that maple syrup substitute thick humor will make watching it a hoot nonetheless.