Novel adaptations are almost always dragged for one reason or another. No two imaginations are the same, so one person’s take, or a conglomerate of people’s take on how a book would be turned into a movie will never be the same. This makes the decision to adapt a book a bold choice. One of the most successful books in recent was Where the Crawdads Sing, and that was adapted into a book that came out this year, and it received terrible reviews, but the big swings could lead to big successes as well such as the God Father and The Shining, which were both originally books. White Noise is a book that came out in 1985. It was written by Don DeLillo, and it won the U.S National Book Award for its respective year. It is jammed pack with dialogue and has a stream of consciousness flow to it, but it is more of a windy river instead of a stream, because the thoughts twist and turn as they try to get to their point.
There are two main story lines that stand out amongst the madness and intellectual babbling. The first one is the Air Borne Toxic Event. A car crashes into a train, and it causes a massive explosion, and the explosion results in a big black cloud filled with what was speculated to be toxins, so Jack and Babette must evacuate their family, but it seems like every decision they make is wrong. First, they were told to evacuate, then they were told to find shelter, and then that shelter was not good enough so they had to move again. The cloud became massive and was dark black and ominous, and it would flash brightly with beautiful strikes of purple lightning. It looked like a sky that would be found in the Upside Down in Stranger Things, so other worldly, an allusion of the storm brewing within Jack and Babette’s relationship, the second storyline.
Denise, Babette’s daughter from a previous marriage, is worried about Baba. Denise knows that Baba is taking some kind of medicine, but she cannot find any information and she hypothesizes that the medicine is what is hurting Baba’s memory. So Jack starts to pry, and at first Baba is a stone wall, she does not want to open up to him at all, despite the fact that being open is what makes their relationship great. She blames her memory for some of the forgetfulness about taking the medicine, and if she knew if the medicine had any side effects. Eventually, Jack is able to get the information out of her as their relationship is spiraling, and he finds out that the medicine is experimental, but there is something more sinister to the story than that.
Noah Baumbach, is an excellent director, and he is known for making incredibly emotional movies about marital distress, but more specifically divorce. His film, A Marriage Story, was one of the best films in 2019, and it was one of my favorites from the year. He also made the very emotional Squid and the Whale, a story about a child in the midst of a divorce, which many people claim to speak to their experience incredibly well. Both movies provoke potent emotions. White Noise is a marriage drama, but it also has so much more going on inside of the story. So although at times the family dynamic, and more specifically the marital dynamic do take center stage, the emotion does not reach the level that he is capable of creating due to the dispersed story telling.
The performances in the movie were interesting as well. The people with the most screen time were Jack, who was played by Adam Driver, Babette, who was played by the great director, Gretta Gerwig, and Murray, played by Don Cheadle. The book itself, which I have not finished yet, but have read a good portion of, is very heavy on dialogue, specifically rapid-fire arguments that are typically philosophical in nature. On top of that, some of the dialogues are taking place in a family setting, so the dialogue will bounce around between conversations as well. The movie did a good of incorporating this in, and the high need to pay attention to the dialogue helped the two hours plus run time go by quickly, but at times it felt more like a theatrical performance.
Towards the beginning of the movie, there is a scene where the students are moving into their dorms for college, and after Jack comes home, him and Babette have a conversation about the students moving in, and it is word for word from the book, which is cool, but at the same time, it felt more rehearsed than natural, but for it work correctly with the rapid amount of dialogue, it seems like it would be hard for it to feel natural. The better example of this came from Murray and Jack doing a collaborative lecture. Murray is doing a lecture on Elvis, and Jack comes in and starts doing a lecture on Hitler at the same time, and they play off each other. Not only in their dialogue, but also in their motions and rotations throughout the room, it was a beautiful scene, that felt perfectly choreographed and rehearsed.
The movie also had a message about the inundation of information. As just mentioned, there is a lot of dialogue in this movie, and not all of it is important, thus the title White Noise. When the toxic black cloud comes, Heinrich, Babette’s son, is listening to the radio, and the radio is constantly spouting information about where the cloud was headed, what was in the cloud, what would happen if exposed, and where to go to seek shelter. The only problem was the information was constantly changing, so they did not know what was correct, and the only information they knew was what the station was willing to share. This took place in the 1980s, when there were multiple ways to garner information, but it is not nearly the same as it is now. Now there are websites and podcasts on everything. There are hundreds of channels on tv. Not to mention all the information that can be garnered on social media. It is harder now than ever to avoid the white noise, and to sift through to find what is the correct information.
The book gives a good example of useless information affecting our decision. Towards the beginning of the book, they mention a barn, and the barn is famous, because it is the most photographed barn in the country, and so tourists flock to this barn from all over to take a picture of it. Before it was just a barn with nothing special about it, but since someone said that it was special then people had to take pictures of it. It is basically Instagram where people go places, just to say that they were there and post it online. He was ahead of his time with his knowledge of people’s addiction to media.
I really enjoyed this movie, but I could see it being controversial. I think people will either love it or hate it. It has a lot of dialogue, and it does not really have one through line on its story, but the meandering makes it good. The banter is also interesting, and the whole movie itself is thought provoking. Some of the thoughts are darker than others, we find out that Babette is taking the pills, because she is scared of dying, and she wants that feeling of dread to go away, and questions are raised about nothingness and the purpose of our work, but at the same time there is a fun family and workplace dynamic. Also the colors are vibrant throughout including some scenes with some bright neon, which is always a plus. I saw this in its limited theater release, but it will be releasing onto Netflix on December 30th, and I highly suggest watching it when it does! I gave it 3.5 stars.
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