White Noise

by Julian Spivey

Photo: Netflix

Director: Noah Baumbach 
Starring: Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig & Don Cheadle 
Rated: R
Runtime: 2 hours & 16 minutes

In December I read (well, technically listened to the audiobook) Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel White Noise in preparation for the release of director Noah Baumbach’s film adaptation, which premiered on Netflix on December 30.

I had read multiple places about how White Noise was felt to be unadaptable or unfilmable for many years, so I wanted to be familiar with the novel before seeing the film. Plus, it’s considered one of the greatest works of fiction of the last half-century.

After finishing the novel, which I was a bit lukewarm on, I didn’t understand why folks felt it was “unfilmable.” In fact, the second section of the novel titled “The Airborne Toxic Event” could make for quite a fun movie.

White Noise, the novel, is separated into three parts: “Waves and Radiation,” “The Airborne Toxic Event” and “Dylarama.” Baumbach chose to stick with the parts of the books for segments of his film, which is understandable. The first part of the book and film basically sets up the characters and themes of the story, while also serving as a satire of academia. Our leads are Jack Gladney, a professor in Hitler Studies (a study he created for his university), and Babette, a stay-at-home mother who volunteers to read to the elderly. They have four kids at home (Heinrich, Denise, Steffie and Wilder) through various marriages. Both Jack and Babette are deathly afraid of dying, something that comes into play often in the novel and film, especially in the third part of each.

In Baumbach’s film, Adam Driver plays Jack and Greta Gerwig plays Babette. It doesn’t really matter all too much who plays their children because they’re mostly background noise – at least in the movie.

The highlight of part one of the film is the dueling lectures between Jack about Adolf Hitler’s relationship with his mother and his co-worker Murray Jay Siskind’s (Don Cheadle) lecture about Elvis Presley’s relationship with his mom.

The most exciting part of both the novel and the film is “The Airborne Toxic Event,” which puts all of our characters and their town in peril and puts Jack and Babette face-to-face with their greatest fear. This nearly hour-long segment shows that Baumbach, a writer and director known for his small, inward stories, could actually make an action-thriller film and be pretty damn good at it.

I really began to get out of White Noise during “Dylarama,” which has Jack seeking to figure out Babette’s secret and upon doing so seeks it out for himself. It’s at this point in Baumbach’s film that I also begin to look at the runtime of the film and wish it would wrap up. It’s just not as interesting to me as the first two parts of the book and film.

So, I came out of viewing “White Noise” much the same way I did listening to the audiobook. I enjoyed much of it and found much of it uninteresting. I felt after finishing the book it may have worked better in its own time of the mid-‘80s than today. It likely felt fresher and more unique.

One thing I’m certain of is that Baumbach has proven White Noise isn’t an “unfilmable” work of art. With the story being so fresh on my mind I found the film to be quite a loyal telling of DeLillo’s story. Sure, Baumbach cuts out certain plotlines, as anyone would with any novel being adapted to film, but he seems to have mostly gotten the key points down, including dialogue that felt verbatim from the novel. He succeeded in proving some folks wrong about “White Noise,” even if the film isn’t an outright success.

Because of the unique structure with which “White Noise” is told I probably couldn’t recommend the film to anyone who hadn’t read the novel or plans on doing so before watching. I think it might just be too confusing. A film should probably be something that can stand on its own. Maybe this is why folks felt it was “unfilmable” in the first place. Maybe the movie is a faithful adaptation of White Noise, but you need the whole of the novel to completely understand its adaptation.