“Life is good, Jack,” muses Babette. But does she really mean that? Is there life been really satisfying? Babette is becoming forgetful, a result of the mysterious pills she is taking.The couple dote on their four intelligent children from this marriage, as well as several previous ones (two of their offspring are played by Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola’s children, Sam and May Nivola).
Jack is concerned that, with a big Hitler studies conference coming up, his peers might discover that he can’t actually speak German.
The family is thrown into an existential crisis, when a load of highly toxic chemicals explodes near their town, sending apocalyptic black clouds into the sky.
Once the authorities upgrade this cloud to an “airborne toxic event,” Jack discovers that his scholarly confidence and other skills might not be sufficient to deal with the unanticipated situation. Just debating whether the horrifying “event” should be labeled as “feathery”, or “billowing” won’t help them survive it.
Midway, the movie switches gears from a biting suburban satire into a more conventional Hollywood disaster movie, displaying the familiar elements of the genre that go back to the 1950s: ominous government warnings, overrun evacuation canters, roads jammed with traffic.
Just as Jack gets the hang of being in a disaster movie, he’s shunted into a conspiracy thriller, in which he’s comically inept, too. Jack’s futile efforts to be an action hero can be hilarious, but White Noise is more than just a parody of academic bumptiousness.
A sophisticated, occasionally original, and sometimes bewildering film, the movie is meant to offer–but not always succeeds in delivering–a sharp commentary on such current malaises as misinformation and consumerism.
It doesn’t help that the characters speak in a dialogue that is both formal and hightened; it takes some getting used to).
Still, despite all his highbrow and lowbrow game-playing, Baumbach ensures that the Gladneys are grounded enough for us to care about. them as human beings. Their dialogue might be too formal and too heightened, which takes the film into another–surreal and stylized realm–but their sense of dread and helplessness are often potent and real.
Baumbach has always been more adept as a sharp writer than as a visual storyteller. It’s a problem he shares with another gifted indie director, Alexander Payne–both are filmmakers without style.
Stylistically, in this film, the bright colors and artificial production design recall those that characterize the miniaturized films of his friend and collaborator, Wes Anderson.
Ultimately, White Noise is a failure, but a noble and honorable one, demonstrating why countess directors have tried to adapt the famed novel to the big screen, only to realize that the material is indeed unfilmable.
