38 years after the book was published, "White Noise", the prophetic and celebrated satirical allegory of the great American writer Don DeLillo, is finally coming to the screen - and I write "finally" mainly because many attempts have already been made to adapt the book to film, and not because someone Was really waiting for this to happen (as far as I know at least).
Surprisingly, the one who finally took on the task of adaptation is actually Noah Baumbach, a screenwriter and director who is better known for realistic comedy dramas (such as "Frances Ha", "Life Between the Lines" and "Marriage Story").
"White Noise" (which premiered on Netflix this weekend) is indeed a very different film from what we are used to getting from Baumbach up until now, both in its size and its ambition.
Unfortunately, it is also one of his less uniform and less successful films.
The plot of the film takes place in a fictional college town in the mid-1980s, and the story revolves around Jack Gladney (Adam Driver) - a popular professor of Hitler studies who lives a seemingly comfortable life with his wife Babette (Greta Gerwig) and their four children.
They are inundated with endless stimuli, and they suppress their existential anxieties with chemicals, watching disasters on TV and frequent visits to the huge and colorful supermarket.
After a freight train carrying dangerous chemicals crashes nearby and creates a big, menacing black cloud, Jack, his family and all the neighbors get into their station wagons and escape.
The fear of death becomes tangible and forces Jack to do something about it.
from the movie.
Very different from what we are used to getting from Baumbach,
"White Noise" is not an uninteresting film, and this is especially true for its first part.
Even if they are no longer particularly innovative, DeLillo's "big" ideas about obsessive consumerism and endless noise as solutions and as a constant distraction from our inevitable end are still very relevant, and they are even reinforced by our dependence on the Internet (which did not exist when the book was written) and the Corona epidemic (which has There are quite a few similarities between her and the ecological event that hit the town).
However, Baumbach's high fidelity to the text and the ways in which he seeks to jump between the events and between the various topics that preoccupied Delilo, yield a barbaric bard that gradually loses its momentum and grace (and which makes it clear that Baumbach is far outside his comfort zone).
The characters recite witty dialogues (and even brilliant episodes) from the book, but they are not convincing for a moment as human beings, and the length of the film (more than two hours) weakens the strength of its messages and emphasizes the fact that what was ahead of its time in the mid-80s - has long since become self-evident .
My recommendation?
Read the book instead of watching the movie.
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