White Noise

                       

Noah Baumbach's White Noise, an adaptation of Don DeLillo's novel, is an example of two great tastes not tasting great together. Baumbach and DeLillo share an East Coast elitist's satiric sting, but Baumbach cannot conjure the writer's horrific alienation and anomie. Baumbach is too much of a mensch, his forte is bourgeoise New York Jewish humor not the hallucinatory horror which is a major aspect of DeLillo's work. A pertinent comparison would be David Cronenberg's film of DeLillo's novel Cosmopolis which better captures DeLillo's dark hues. 

A white elephant, a kluge, White Noise is, at least, an interesting failure. There are too many good actors in the picture for it to be devoid of interesting scenes. I enjoyed the contributions of Adam Driver, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola (eerily channeling Jesse Eisenberg), Don Cheadle, and Lars Eidinger. The musical score by Danny Elfman and the production design by Jess Gonchor almost hold together a film that lurches from one important theme to another without establishing a consistent tone or vision. DeLillo's multiple themes, which include but are not limited to consumerism, environmentalism, drug abuse, crowd psychology and a critique of the fecklessness of academia, would seem better suited to the mini-series format. 

I was surprised by how much I disliked Greta Gerwig's performance. Her character needs to evince a sense of inner torment and depression. Instead, we get a glazed sadness. White Noise seems to function more as Marriage Story 2 than an adaptation of DeLillo. Baumbach has never been a vigorous visual stylist, but the demands of this project seems beyond him. This is particularly evident in the crowd scenes at the Boy Scouts' camp. Bill Camp's rant, in particularly, is ill-served by Baumbach's seasick mise-en-scene. 

The events pictured in White Noise should verge on horrifying. Instead, in Baumbach's film, they are kooky or mildly unpleasant. Only the last musical sequence shows what might have been, but ultimately, Baumbach is too tasteful for the material.