Review: Noah Baumbach’s lively, stylish adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel “White Noise” is faithfully, even reverently, tuned to the buzzing dread and strange surrealism of the author’s postmodern masterwork, AP Film Writer Jake Coyle writes.
But DeLillo’s rhythm and vernacular, here energetically adapted by Baumbach, remains intoxicatingly singular. Realism was never the point, and Baumbach’s lively, stylish “White Noise” wholeheartedly embraces the book’s dizzying, dense intensity. Baumbach, the New York filmmaker of “Marriage Story” and “The Squid and the Whale,” has usually mined his own life for drama, with the exception of a previous adaptation with Wes Anderson.
“White Noise” begins in a talky, theatrical register. Baumbach is a natural when it comes to manic, mannered neurosis but less sure-footed in translating DeLillo’s darker, conspiratorial tones. It makes an initially awkward, overly frenetic fit here, though it’s understandable to want to stuff as much of DiLillo’s dialogue in as possible.
After the “toxic airborne event,” Jack is newly awoken to the closeness of his own death, and maybe those around him. The source of that Dylar is another looming poison, a plotline that reaches an emotional climax in Babette’s teary confession, played movingly by Gerwig. The second half of “White Noise,” perhaps like the book, struggles to match its memorable first half.
“White Noise,” a Netflix release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for brief violence and language. Running time: 136 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
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