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Adam Driver (middle), Greta Gerwig (left) with their film children in "White Noise": Everything was so colorful in the seventies
Photo: Wilson Webb / Netflix
The oldest cinema festival in the world is no longer interested in cinema, but thinks streaming is great.
That is the clear message of yesterday's opening night of the Venice Film Festival.
Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle, Adam Driver and many other stars stroll down the red carpet in front of the festival palazzo on the Lido and can also be seen in the ballroom in the film »White Noise« by Noah Baumbach.
However, the film is not made for the cinema, but a Netflix production that will be shown in cinemas for a very short time at best, and will be available on the streaming platform from December - you can see that in this work.
»White Noise« is screamingly colorful, intelligent, funny.
And so exaggerated that the film is clearly not aimed at the largest possible cinema audience.
It's made for a streaming provider that doesn't give a damn about the number of viewers it doesn't even publish.
One way or another, Netflix gets the money from the fees charged by users.
Director Baumbach masterfully uses the freedom that services like Netflix give prominent filmmakers and actors.
Freed from all production constraints, such as narrative stringency and psychological plausibility, he lets himself get away with too much gag cockiness.
In Venice, Oscar candidates are allowed to show
His film is about an American teacher (Gerwig) and a university professor (Driver), whose patchwork family is thoroughly shaken up - firstly by a chemical accident near where they live and secondly by the appearance of a curious rival, the German actor Lars Eidinger plays.
A novel by Don DeLillo, which was published in 1985 and is called "White Noise" in German, serves as a template.
In Cannes, at the organizers’ most important competing film festival in Venice, works from streaming services are excluded.
On the other hand, they are just as welcome at the Lido as they are at the Oscars in Hollywood.
The fact that the Venice Biennale, which was founded 90 years ago, and the world's most important cinema prize, in fact give up the distinction between cinema films and actually purely television productions, is evidently decided by the heads of both institutions.
»Netflix dominates the autumn festival«, writes the industry journal »Hollywood Reporter« at the opening at the Lido and with a view to the film festivals in Toronto and New York.
"But don't expect to ever see the films in a theater near you."
After Selenskyj's speech, the desire for cinema horror seems cynical
Venice's festival director Alberto Barbera seems particularly pleased this year that, thanks to his enthusiasm for stream products, he can welcome a large number of Oscar candidates to the Lido.
For the first time, a Netflix original is the opening film.
Hillary Clinton will also be a guest on the red festival carpet on Wednesday evening.
The former US Secretary of State chats relaxed with onlookers.
An older viewer thanks her a bit pathetically "for everything you've done for us women," applauding.
Then Clinton, accompanied by a couple of bodyguards, walks towards the jetty before the opening ceremony begins.
In the hall, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj speaks a video greeting and calls the Russian war of aggression against his country a "horror that has not lasted 120 minutes, but for 189 days".
He then reads out the names of 358 children who have been killed since the war began more than six months ago.
Of course, after this video speech, it seems cynical when, at the beginning of the opening film »White Noise«, the actor Cheadle, in the role of a crazy art professor, explains the audience's pleasure in bloody terror.
The professor shows his students spectacular, gruesome, even deadly cinema car accidents - and there is just such a particularly bizarre and particularly terrible car accident to see later in Baumbach's film.
Survival strategy in times of crisis: more courage to joke
What can the art of filmmakers convey to people in politically dark times like the current one?
Baumbach relies on the courage to joke as a survival strategy.
"White Noise" is, more than Don DeLillo's novel, a shrill satire.
It deals with serious contemporary issues.
From the destruction of the environment.
On people's susceptibility to conspiracy theories.
About the fear of death of children who wear face masks and about the death fixation of western civilization.
But amidst the horror and apocalypse, Driver's professor, a specialist in Hitler research, and his loved ones are having a surprising amount of fun.
The children make wonderfully precocious speeches when a mass exodus ensues after a tanker truck and a freight train carrying chemicals collide.
The parents communicate with funny faces and perform breakneck tricks to save the family.
The actress Gerwig wears an absurd permanent wave hairstyle and the actor Driver wears a funny plauze over his trouser belt, even after admitting adultery they are a cuddly comic dream couple.
In the brightly colored colors of the 1970s, Baumbach's wild, confused horror fairy tale gives the heroes a kind of salvation in the simulation of a happy life, of all things - in a huge, brightly colored supermarket.