Review of White Noise, directed by Noah Baumbach

When White Noise was first prepping to come out for public release, I was at the New York Film Festival for press screenings. I work as a film critic outside of this blog over at MovieWeb, and this was my first in-person coverage at NYFF.

I wasn’t covering this specific movie, but I was thinking about seeing it when I was over there because it was a free chance to see the movie, but because it was at 9 AM and I was coming in from Brooklyn, I was thinking about how I couldn’t get up at like 7 in order to haul myself an hour towards Lincoln Center’s theaters.

So I didn’t go and missed the press conference. I’m kind of glad that I didn’t go because apparently the press line was so long they filled the original theater, then live streamed the press conference from across the street for the unfortunate souls who weren’t able to make it to the screening line early enough to get in before.

Anyways, I forgot about this movie for over a year, then randomly decided to watch it on a whim because the plot seemed right up my alley for the mood I was in at the time.

Here’s my review!

A college professor in Hitler studies finds himself—and his family—stuck in an apocalyptic scenario.

Adam Driver portrays the main character of White Noise, Jack Gladney, who founded the field of Hitler studies. He teaches at a university in the middle of nowhere Ohio, and when he is invited to a conference, he realizes he needs to get his act together because, as it turns out, he has no experience in German.

That’s the first whiplash we get in this movie, because a white man pretending to speak German and founding a field, becoming a leader in it? Truly unheard of! (Note the sarcasm here please.)

Anyways, he’s taking courses to prepare for the conference, as he needs to seem somewhat competent in German. At home, his fourth wife and four kids are trying to get along, but because half the kids are from a different marriage, there’s some underlying tension going on here.

One of the kids, Denise, spies on her new stepmother and realizes that the mother, Babette, is onto some drugs.

At the same time, Jack is grappling with one of his coworkers trying to found a field in Elvis studies, and the two have matches in front of the students where they’re basically saying two sides of the same thing but trying to sound smarter than the other.

While they’re feuding at the university, a train accident causes toxic fumes to go all over the town. While eating dinner the family gets the evacuation notice, but when they get caught in a traffic jam, Jack stops for some gas.

While he’s pumping gas into the car, he’s exposed to the chemicals. They are then forced into quarantine, and Jack is given a pistol because apparently there are some hardcore people inside of this camp.

Chaos unfolds one day when people try to escape, and the family almost makes it out, but their car ends up in a river and they land at Iron City.

The days pass, Jack’s fears worsen when he encounters a man who claims he’s seen him before, and the family, after going home, has to deal with Jack’s newfound paranoia of death.

More time passes, but Babette starts to distance herself and seems ill to everyone else. Jack begins having hallucinations, Babette confesses that she joined a shady clinical trial where she had sex with an even shadier guy for drugs.

Jack gets the pistol he got earlier and hunts down the guy, realizes the man is the same one as in his hallucinations, and he shoots the guy. Babette shows up, the guy then shoots them upon waking, and they manage to convince him that he was responsible for everything that happened.

There’s then a strange dance number at the end of the movie.

Overall Thoughts

It’s absurdist comedy at its finest, that’s for sure. I don’t think this is Noah Baumbach’s best movie to date, but it certainly was a wild ride throughout. I’ve come to realize that Adam Driver does something that can be seen as really weird, that I generally enjoy that kind of movie.

This was pretty solid, but some of his other wacky movies are just straight up terrible and I have a guilty pleasure watching them alone in the dark late at night.

Anyways, I enjoyed this film despite it being kind of a mess when it comes to the plot.

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