Review | Venice 2022: White Noise movie review – Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig in Noah Baumbach’s primary-coloured adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel
- The Marriage Story director returns to the subject of the 2019 film, the nuclear family, in this tale about doomy parents fleeing from environmental disaster
- Adam Driver plays a professor of Hitler Studies and Greta Gerwig his pill-popping wife in a film stuffed with literary dialogue that has a Wes Anderson feel
3.5/5 stars
Noah Baumbach takes on the great American novelist Don DeLillo in White Noise, the opening film of the 2022 Venice Film Festival. A dramedy in primary colours based on the author’s breakthrough 1985 work, it is the filmmaker’s latest look at the nuclear family, following films like The Squid and the Whale (2005) and Marriage Story (2019).
The focus is Jack Gladney (Adam Driver), a professor in Hitler Studies at The College-on-the-Hill, husband to Babette (Greta Gerwig), and father of their four children.
Both Jack and Babette fret about which of them will die first. “All plots move deathward,” announces Jack, a signal of intent for what’s to come.
Gradually, the family’s older daughter, Denise (Raffey Cassidy), comes to realise that her mother is popping pills and suffering from memory lapses. What are these pharmaceuticals? And why is she so addicted? Certainly, Jack hasn’t got a clue, and when he confronts the doctor who prescribes her medication, he gets short shrift.
In the second act, the plot hinges on the moment a drunken truck driver crashes at high speed into a goods train, leaking toxic chemicals into the air.