Like Jack Gladney’s (Adam Driver) overcrowded home, white noise it also seems to be this chaotic thing where many voices speak at once and nothing is comprehensible or seems to make sense. It’s that cacophony that seems impossible to understand, but which reveals a series of speeches as you learn to isolate each one of them. And it is in this understanding game that the true charm of the film lies.
For this very reason, it is impossible to point out a single reading for Noah Baumbach’s new film. In fact, the feature film presents and develops different themes intertwined in a story that flirts with the absurd and mixes drama and humor to speak from human relationships and the fear of death to criticism of capitalism and society’s own behavior in times of crisis.
There’s so much going on and being said at the same time that it’s very easy to get lost. And the script itself knows this and plays with this confusion by presenting us with the necessary reading key to understand what is behind this profusion of voices: in the midst of chaos, we need to look for the minimum of normality to support us. It’s about turning everything that’s unimportant into white noise that we’ve come to ignore.
In search of an apparent normality
After the success of Story of a MarriageBaumbach returns to Netflix with a very different style of story, but which still has some similarities to the feature that earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay in 2020. Although he changes the more mundane and dramatic tone for a humor based on the absurd, white noise still remains quite introspective and extremely personal.
Part of this is the fruit of the original work. The film that arrives on Netflix on December 30th is the adaptation of the book by Dan DeLillo, who already carries part of this more chaotic style in his writing and which is very well transported to the screens around here. Baumbach’s merit, therefore, lies in translating the style and updating the concept in a story that has a lot to tell us at the turn of 2022 to 2023.
Starting with the fact that it is impossible not to draw a parallel between white noise and the post-pandemic world we find ourselves in. The story of the feature begins with a train accident that spreads a toxic cloud in a small town, making its residents have to learn to deal with this invisible threat that hovers around everyone.
But that doesn’t make it a disaster movie, as the basic synopsis might suggest. In fact, the heart of the script lies precisely in the relationships that orbit the tragedy. And that includes society’s attempt to cling to a false sense of normalcy in the face of the absurd, as well as the impacts that this near-death experience has on each of us.
It is for this reason that it is impossible to extract a single meaning from white noise. From this episode that breaks with the norm, Noah Baumbach will explore different issues that are not directly connected, but that dialogue with the central fact. Thus, we have these various discourses happening in parallel and it is up to the viewer to isolate them in order to understand what is being said.
And that’s what causes such a cacophony that the film may not be for everyone. Like a kaleidoscope in which you see different things depending on how you look at it, it transits between a heavy drama and a very particular comedy that can surprise (or disappoint) anyone who expected a more conventional script of this or that genre.
In a very intelligent way, he contests precisely this quest for normality that the script presents. In the same way that Jack tries to keep calm and show that there is nothing exceptional about this smoke that spreads through the city, we also try to fit the plot into a little box and feel uncomfortable when we realize that he is neither a thing nor a thing. other.
It’s what makes the name white noise make complete sense. It is this tendency that we have to ignore all the noise around us to focus on a single point that makes sense to us or that gives us a (false) sense of security in the face of the chaos that surrounds us. And this is satirized within the story, which shows how we use capitalism for this — represented here by the order that a supermarket has to offer — or even the cinema, which will remove the violence and brutality of an accident to transform it into a constant to which we can cling.
Experiences that transform us
Similarly, white noise it also explores how much these traumatic episodes transform us, although this attachment to normality does not always prevent us from seeing this.
It doesn’t take much effort to see how the chemical accident works as this allegory for the covid-19 pandemic we’ve lived with for so long. But the important thing for the story is precisely what comes after — so much so that he doesn’t waste so much time showing what those apocalyptic days were like in the city.
As said, Jack and everyone around him are always attached to this typical routine of the American lifestyle. Despite the protagonist’s family being anything but common, the image they have of themselves is the same as in any margarine commercial. And it is when they are confronted with this almost cataclysmic experience that this normal begins to crumble.
The protagonist’s ideal life becomes haunted, for example, by a fear of death that has always existed, but not as latently as it is now. And that starts to move the character towards issues that have never been a problem for him until then and that will shake the normality that he has always cherished. The same can be said of existential crises, anxiety spikes and all those reflexes that both the characters and we come to share.
It’s a pretty accurate satire of something we’ve all come to face to a greater or lesser extent and that gives white noise a more than special taste. Despite the very particular humor, it is impossible not to recognize yourself in the teacher’s paranoia or in his growing insecurity in the face of the uncertainties of this world that proved to be so out of his control.
A style for few
The great point is that, despite having so much to tell us, white noise it is a film that is not very palatable to the general public. Once again, its structure does not fit what we expect from a drama or a comedy and this escape from the common can cause strangeness in those looking for something more common.
But it is in this strangeness that the heart of the film lies. Adam Driver delivers an incredible interpretation of this peculiar teacher who thinks he is so normal that he is passionate. Likewise, Greta Gerwig lives Babette, a dedicated wife who must deal with her own fears and demons while trying to support her family in her own way.
In parallel to the couple, we have several other characters who make their contribution to the chaotic cacophony and who, each in their own way, help to bring order to this whole mess. From the professors at the university where Jack works to the couple’s own children, there are so many people with so much to say that it’s very easy to get lost — and that’s the real fun of the whole thing.
white noise is available exclusively on Netflix.
