Review: White Noise

Image courtesy of Netflix.

There are some novels that dare to be adapted into films. Just look at "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and "Breakfast of Champions," which were said to be untranslatable - and then look at how badly those movies turned out. God forbid the day that someone attempts to direct an "Infinite Jest" adaptation.

Don DeLillo's seminal 1980s novel "White Noise" is another in this category. For years, rumors of film adaptations of DeLillo's surrealist social satire of the Reagan years were floated, but they never came to fruition. I'll give director Noah Baumbach much credit for even making an attempt at it - and even more for the fact that it's, well, not half bad.

Trying to describe what "White Noise" is about is a fool's errand. It's obsessed with death - and '80s consumerist culture, and cults of personality, underground conspiracies, academic intellectualism, and Adolf Hitler. Oh yeah, and Elvis. It's set in some suburb somewhere in the United States. Its lead character, Jack Gladney (Adam Driver), is the leading expert on Hitler studies, while his good friend (Don Cheadle) is a professor who primarily talks about Elvis.

The film opens with Cheadle's character giving a lecture on car crashes in American movies - and that despite all the blood, glass and violence of the event, they are a form of optimism. Perhaps, the word he was searching for was catharsis. Throughout the course of "White Noise," its character frequently talk about their fear of death, but what they're in search of is something cathartic.

And it's easy to see why. During the film's second chapter, a crash between a truck and train carrying toxic chemicals creates what is known as the Airborne Toxic Event. This leaves the townspeople scrambling to find shelter. Jack and his wife, Babbette (Greta Gerwig), pack up their blended family and go in search of whatever safe place they can find - a school auditorium is among those locales.

Then, the film makes a darker tonal shift as Jack finds out that his wife's increasingly odd behavior is due to her once taking part in a medical study in which she was a test subject trying out a dangerous drug. Jack becomes upset when he finds out that this is not all of the story, and he takes a desperate measure that leads to a scene of violence and a reconciliation that is - you guessed it - cathartic. And then there's a dance sequence at a supermarket.

It has been a long time since I read DeLillo's novel. I recall being quite taken with it. After one viewing of Baumbach's film, I'm not sure I can easily summarize my feelings on it or what it's all meant to convey. It's often funny, but occasionally fills one with a sense of unease. Characters speak in non sequiturs and the film's production values look high. The film's characters undertake all manner of actions - watching car crashes in movies, obsessing about Elvis, buying items they don't need and dancing in grocery stores - to distract themselves from reality and the specter of death.

The film's first two halves are more successful than its final third, when the action becomes more disturbing but less focused. It helps that his cast is strong - especially Driver, who takes a role that's difficult to wrap one's head around and makes it feel instinctual.

I've long been an admirer of Baumbach's work. "White Noise" isn't one of his best films, but it's probably his most ambitious. It's not a great movie, but it's a good one. He swings for the fences and the result is often compelling. It's certainly unlike anything else you'll probably see this year.