Stream It Or Skip It: ‘White Noise’ on Netflix, a Bewildering Satire About Life, Death, and Shopping

White Noise (now on Netflix) is notable on several fronts: Director Noah Baumbach not only steps away from his signature small-scale interpersonal dramedies (Marriage Story, Frances Ha), but adapts someone else’s story. And that story is novelist Don DeLillo’s highly acclaimed 1985 novel White Noise, deemed by some as – here comes that word – “unfilmable,” the adaptation of which passed through the hands of Barry Sonnenfeld and Michael Almereyda during the last couple of decades before landing with Baumbach. The film also marks the first front-of-camera role for Greta Gerwig since 2016’s 20th Century Women, and reunites the director with Marriage Story star Adam Driver. To call it a doozy of a film may be to understate the power of doozies.

WHITE NOISE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It’s the early 1980s, which might mean something, or it might not. Prof. Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle) gives a college lecture on how elaborate car crashes in movies represent “American optimism,” which might mean something, or it might not. Potentially more meaningful is the introduction to Jack Gladney (Driver), who goes by Prof. J.A.K. Gladney, who knows exactly why, but we assume it’s because it makes him sound more distinguished, considering he’s the head of the College-on-the-Hill’s “Hitler studies program.” Funny thing is, Jack is secretly ashamed, since he’s such an esteemed lecturer in courses such as Advanced Naziism, and he can’t even speak German. He’s taking lessons covertly, in preparation for the big upcoming “Hitler conference.” We could go on about Jack’s particular concentration of knowledge, but we shouldn’t, because there are so many other things about this film that poke, provoke, satirize and infer. So, so many.

Jack lives in an indeterminate Midwestern city, which might mean something, or – you know. He has Ohio license plates on his big station wagon, if that matters. He’s married to Babette (Gerwig), whose tightly curled hair is a sight to behold. She teaches fitness classes to elderly people. They’ve each been married three times hence, with children from those relationships, and one child of their own union. At first, the daily commotion in their household is such that we can’t tell exactly how many children they have. Could be a couple, could be a dozen. Eventually the edits and overlapping dialogue settle down so we can count four kids as they pile into the station wagon to escape the Airborne Toxic Event, evolved from a “feathery plume” to a “billowy cloud,” a thick, black, smoky pollutant that threatens the townsfolk after a drunk tanker-truck driver collides with a train hauling its own tankers of explosive goop. Four children – the Gladneys wouldn’t leave anyone behind, so we can be certain it stops at four. As they navigate a chaotic evacuation, Jack is exposed to the Airborne Toxic Event, and it might eventually kill him, maybe, perhaps. Possibly in about 15 years? This, after he and Babette have a borderline-insane conversation in which each hopes he/she dies first because he/she can’t bear the thought of going on without him/her. They do love each other. They do.

The world about the Gladneys is bursting with consumer brands. They’re everywhere – foreground, background, ground-ground. I’d name some but I hate doing that in any context, even though the logos and colors are period-accurate (I should know, I was alive back then and consumed some of said products) and deployed with satirical intent rather than for the sake of product placement, but I’ll hold true to my principles. The supermarket is the hub of community activity, with its splashy arrays of luridly packaged snacks and cleaning products. It’s quite beautiful, to be honest – a bursting rainbow of consumables. The BRANDS clutter the counters and tabletops and shelves of the Gladney home as various dramas unfold, most notably the Airborne Toxic Event, which I must note is merely a piece of the loopy plotline here, and how Babette is secretly taking mystery pills, a drug called Dylar. There’s a scene in which she swallows something and Jack interrogates her and she says it’s just a name-brand candy, cherry flavor, but he wants to know why she didn’t suck on it first, because it’s the type of candy you don’t just swallow like that, and she says of her swallowing, “That was just saliva I didn’t know what to do with.” Notably, the local movie theater is showing Krull – or perhaps that’s not notable. I noted it, though.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: White Noise merges the dryyyyyy comedy of Baumbach’s collabos with Wes Anderson (they co-wrote The Life Aquatic and Fantastic Mr. Fox) with the doomsday scenarios of War of the Worlds or, I dunno, Greenland, the social satires of Alexander Payne (Citizen Ruth or, less successfully, Downsizing) and the dark absurdities of Terry Gilliam (Brazil, 12 Monkeys).

Performance Worth Watching: After a period during which she wrote and directed two wonderful, wonderful films – Lady Bird and Little Women – Gerwig returns to acting, and reminds us of how she so effortlessly navigates the sweet spot between wit and earnestness.

Memorable Dialogue: Jack and Murray chat as they stroll through the supermarket, filling their carts:

Murray: Your wife’s hair is a living wonder.

Jack: Yes, it is.

Murray: She has important hair.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: I employ grand reductionism when I say White Noise is an unruly film. It’s divided into three chapters: A comedy that skewers consumer culture and the blowhard bullroar of academia, an absurdist eco-disaster satire and a marriage-crisis drama – although elements of all three bleed into each other, so it’s not a disjointed experience. It’s about materialism, conformity, family, knowledge (or the illusion thereof), depression and the unavoidable inevitability of death, but it’s not about Krull, not at all. I sound like an apologist while asserting that our inability to comprehend the overwhelming everything here is entirely deliberate; Baumbach renders his protagonists relatable by mirroring their recalcitrant existential quandaries via our experience of them. Case in point: The characters use big words to try to understand the un-understandables of their reality, and here I am, using big words like “recalcitrant existential quandaries” to try to understand the un-understandables of this movie.

There are times when White Noise feels like it’s absurdism and provocation for its own sake, which can be frustrating. But it’s also frequently laugh-out-loud funny; Driver and Gerwig, both perfectly cast, show comedic nuance where others might go broad; and it’s overwhelming in its dense, well-considered visuals. Baumbach shows large-scale directorial ambition we haven’t quite seen from him before: He cuts between the stupid-awesome train/truck wreck and an amusingly bombastic mega-lecture in which Jack and Murray give their respective Hitler and Elvis presentations some extra theatrical oomph. The camera glides through rooms and aisles full of people philosophizing and/or shopping. He saves the most technically challenging sequence for the very end, when everyone once again converges in the ever-lively supermarket space to buy things, the salve on an inability to make sense of things.

The manner with which Baumbach shifts from one idea to the next before we can fully comprehend their implications is, again, intentional. The film is designed to keep us off-balance. Its primary currency is uncertainty – Jack struggles with his impending mortality, whenever it’s going to come, who knows, and Babette’s nebulous unhappiness inspires her to seek an equally nebulous solution for it. Whether they’re amazing people or idiots is up for discussion. And then, in the final throes of the final act, we get a discussion of the pragmatism and idealism of religion, the movie having covered the pointed pointlessness of everything but theology, and that’s a big one, so hey, we better toss it in there. It’s such a weird experience, this film; it shows the intricacy and diligence of a visionary work, but none of the coherence. You want to wrap your arms around it, but the hard truth is, it’s not supposed to be huggable. Not in the least.

Our Call: Your mileage may vary with White Noise. It works as much as it doesn’t work. It’s brilliant, but impossible. It’s a challenge. STREAM IT, but only if you know what you’re getting into.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.