White Noise had its world premiere at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on August 31, 2022, and was released in select theaters on November 25 before its streaming release by Netflix on December 30. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, with Baumbach's direction, cinematography, cast performances (particularly Driver's), and Danny Elfman's score receiving praise, although the film's screenplay, varying tones, and length divided many.
Plot
In 1984, Jack Gladney is a professor of "Hitler studies" (a field he founded) at the College-on-the-Hill, in Ohio. Despite his specialization, he speaks no German and is secretly taking basic lessons to prepare for a speech he is due to give at a conference. Jack is married to Babette, his fourth wife. Together, they have a blended family with four children: Heinrich and Steffie, from two of Jack's previous marriages; Denise, from one of Babette's previous marriages; and Wilder, a child they conceived together. Denise finds Babette's secret stash of Dylar, a mysterious drug not listed in the usual records. Jack has a dream about a mysteriously threatening man, alluding to an earlier conversation with Babette about their shared fear of death. His colleague Murray Siskind, a professor of American culture, wishes to develop a similarly niche field, "Elvis studies", and convinces Jack to help him.
Their lives are disrupted when a truck carrying toxic chemicals collides with a train, releasing a cloud of waste. This "Airborne Toxic Event" forces a massive evacuation and a traffic jam on the highway. The Gladneys stop at a gas station to refuel their car, and Jack is exposed to the cloud. The family and many others are forced into quarantine at a summer camp. Experts tell Jack his exposure may shorten his life. Murray gives Jack a palm-sized pistol to protect himself against the more dangerous survivalists in the camp. One day, multiple families desperately try to escape the camp. The Gladneys take the back way out and ford a river before arriving in Iron City, where they encounter a man who rants about the evacuees' lack of media attention but stops when he sees Jack, claiming to have déjà vu of that moment. After nine days, the family returns home. Jack's exposure to the cloud has heightened his fear of death.
Later, everything has returned to normal except that Babette has become pale, lethargic, and emotionally distant from the rest of the family. Soon afterward, Jack begins hallucinating a balding man following him around. Denise is worried about the Dylar and Jack confronts Babette. She admits to having joined a shadowy clinical trial for a drug to treat death anxiety, and says that when she was cut from the trial, she agreed to have sex with "Mr. Gray" in exchange for continuing to receive the drug. The couple become distraught and distanced, and Jack searches through the trash for the last Dylar pills to treat his own fear of death. He instead finds a tabloid advertisement for the clinical trial, prompting him to retrieve his pistol and find Mr. Gray. Jack arranges to meet him at a motel to buy Dylar, and discovers that Mr. Gray is the man from his hallucinations. Jack shoots him and places the gun in his hand to make it look like suicide. Babette unexpectedly arrives as Mr. Gray, still alive, shoots them both. After Jack and Babette convince the confused Mr. Gray that he is responsible for all their injuries, they take him to a nearby hospital run by German atheist nuns. There, the couple reconcile.
The next day, the Gladneys visit their local supermarket. They and the other patrons and employees dance as the credits roll.
The film score is by Danny Elfman and was released as an album on November 18, 2022.[21][22]LCD Soundsystem reunited to record its first new music in over five years for the film. The song, "New Body Rhumba", was released as a single on September 30.[23][24]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, White Noise holds a rating of 64% based on 261 reviews, with an average rating of 6.5/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "White Noise may occasionally struggle with its allegedly unfilmable source material, but Noah Baumbach succeeds in finding the humorous heart of its surprisingly timely story."[29] On Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the film has a score of 66 out of 100, based on 45 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[30]
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film five out of five stars, writing, "Baumbach has landed a sizeable white whale in his tremendously elegant and assured adaptation."[31]The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney called it "Equal parts clear signal and wearying static", praising the cast performances, humor, and score, but finding the screenplay inconsistent.[32] David Ehrlich of IndieWire called the adaptation "equal parts inspired and exasperating".[33]
In Artforum, Will Sloan wrote that the lead roles are played as if they are in different films and called the score a "thick lather" and the ending smug: "there's no escape from banality, but at least we can smirk at it."[34]
Filmmaker Wes Anderson wrote, "This movie is dazzling and mysterious and poetic and wildly entertaining. It's a completely new concoction from one of our most original voices who has refined and developed his talents in ways we can only stand back and admire (and enjoy)."[35]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
