Netflix brings "The White Noise" to the cinema: everyday life and apocalypse

Created: 12/08/2022 10:39 am

By: Michael Schleicher

A terribly nice family in the Netflix film "The White Noise": Jack (Adam Driver), his wife Babette (Greta Gerwig) and their four children.

©Netflix

Noah Baumbach adapted The White Noise for Netflix based on the novel by Don DeLillo.

Now the satire is coming to the cinema;

At the end of December it will then run on the streaming service.

Shortly before the end, when this film turns into the home straight on its roller coaster ride between everyday life and the apocalypse, Barbara Sukowa has a marvelous performance as a nun to kneel down.

In this role, she says a sentence that applies to everyone who sees Noah Baumbach's "The White Noise".

At the bedside of the main characters Jack and Babette, Sukowa explains her calling as follows: "Our job is to believe what nobody takes seriously."

Netflix shows "The White Noise" from December 30, 2022

It's not the worst advice to have fun in the cinema with this satire that is as true as it is insane.

Baumbach, who most recently impressed with the marital tragedy "Marriage Story", filmed Don DeLillo's novel "The White Noise" from 1985 for Netflix.

Now the production is coming to the cinema;

the streaming service will then offer it from December 30, 2022.

In his book, DeLillo tells of university professor Jack, his wife Babette and their patchwork family with four children.

They live in a college town in the American Midwest in the 1980s.

Typical university environment, you might think.

Upper middle class, terraced house with a dog - the strangest thing is the clothes and hairstyles.

Are you kidding me? Are you serious when you say that.

Everyone here has a sock shot: Jack, for example, is an expert in “Hitler Studies” – but the professor doesn’t speak German, which he tries to hide as best he can.

The lesson he secretly takes ends in the sentence "I eat potato salad".

Well, meal.

His wife, on the other hand, is so afraid of death that she takes a drug that is not registered anywhere.

She gets it from a shady guy played by Lars Eidinger

Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig impress in The White Noise

In this basic constellation, Baumbach, together with his great leading actors Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig and an outrageously well-cast ensemble, discovers plenty of bizarre everyday moments and a lot of situation comedy.

But that's not all: A chemical accident creates a toxic cloud, mass panic and escape because the city has to be evacuated.

The world is upside down;

Jack, Babette and the kids are given a good shake more than once before everything is put back in place.

Or not.

In the natural sciences, "white noise" is often used to depict disturbances in an otherwise perfect model calculation.

The "white noise" is therefore the coincidence that diverts the test setup from the ideal line.

The film tells of nothing else: with wit, devotion, love for its characters and a great love of storytelling.

In a lecture that can be seen right at the beginning, a professor lectures on scenes with car crashes in US cinemas.

His thesis: There are no accidents to be seen here, but rather the collisions are “an expression of American optimism”, they show a “spiritual moment”.

And where, if not in the cinema, would be the right place to believe what nobody takes seriously?

Even.

(More Netflix movies? Read our reviews of Guillermo del Toros Pinocchio and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery here.)