White Noise – Review
136 Minutes, Rated R
Written and Directed by Noah Baumbach (from the book by Don DeLillo)
**NOTE: this post will be updated with audio once we actually have the chance to talk about it. Until then, read Mark’s review below. Stay tuned.**
Synopsis:
Dramatizes a contemporary American family’s attempts to deal with the mundane conflicts of everyday life while grappling with the universal mysteries of love, death, and the possibility of happiness in an uncertain world.
You know, I like a wacky movie as much as the next guy. I really do.
But this one…
Look, I’m not going to mince words here. I really enjoyed the bizarro offering that was Bardo, and I enjoyed Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story well enough. With White Noise, however, here is where my head is at:
Going in and watching the first five minutes I thought, “well, this is some seriously pretentious, pseudo-intellectual bullshit.”
After letting Baumbach get his artistic schwerve on for 2 more hours, I left the theater thinking “well, that was some seriously pretentious, pseudo-intellectual bullshit.”
Dont’ get me wrong, I think there are kernals of truth and reality in here, but they’re buried beneath so many layers of auteur-ism that it’s basically undigestable.
Before you get all huffy with me, relax a second; I get that the film is literally about the “whtie noise” that permeates our everday existence, making it difficult to find what’s important, lending itself to our increasing sense of existential dread and whatnot.
I. Get. It.
But as a film, is it enjoyable? No.
Is it something that basically any movie-goer can watch and appreciate? No.
I know people that loved this movie, and God bless them. I also know people that agree with me.
I believe there will be very few people on the fence about this one.
For me, all I can tell you is that there are far better films to be seen than White Noise.
Want to know how I can tell? A24 was involved in this one, but all the advertising is about Netflix. Even A24 went “You know what? You can have this one.”
There is a literal train wreck in this film. make of that what you will.
White Noise is in select theaters now and is expanding into more markets.
White Noise stars wastes Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Raffey Cassidy, Don Cheadle, Jodies Turner-Smith, Andre 3000, and Sam Nivola.
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