The film "White Noise" by director Noah Baumbach is one of Netflix's more recent prestige projects. With Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, the satire has a prominent cast - and Baumbach ("Marriage Story") seems to have been given all artistic freedom. The film is long, entertaining, flashy and quite convoluted in its plot. However, that could also be due to the template - it is the film adaptation of a novel by Don DeLillo.
"White Noise" tells of the patchwork family around Professor Jack (Driver), his wife Babette (Gerwig) and their four children from different relationships. They live in a college town in the American Midwest in the 1980s. First, the everyday life of Jack and the family is shown in scenes of amusing situational comedy. For example, Jack is an expert on "Hitler Studies" but has to hide the fact that he doesn't speak German. He secretly takes lessons and learns, for example, the important sentence: "I eat potato salad."
In other scenes we see the inevitable chaos at home with such a large family - and children who are more grown-up than their parents. In between there are always trips to the supermarket, where the parents can distract themselves from their frequent thoughts of death.
Surprising turn
At some point, however, the story shifts from humorous milieu studies to a dizzying plot. The everyday life of the family is turned upside down after a chemical accident. Her hometown is evacuated, and Jack comes into contact with a poisonous substance while trying to escape.
It is impossible for the family to get reliable information. Meanwhile, Babette takes a mysterious drug to take away her fear of death. And then there is also a bizarre rival in the form of Lars Eidinger, with whom Babette is flirting. Then the story gets a little weird. Later, Barbara Sukowa can also be seen in a supporting role as a nun.
"White Noise" is a satire about the life of an American family, consumption and the academic world, in which one often loses the thread and then happily picks it up again.
White Noise, USA 2022, 136 minutes, by Noah Baumbach, with Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, Lars Eidinger, Barbara Sukowa
