Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig face suburban apocalypse in White Noise teaser
Noah Baumbach's latest film features the auteur's take on a disaster movie
Aux News Greta
Noah Baumbach’s films are filled with little, personal disasters, but White Noise may contain the most literal version yet. Based on Don DeLillo’s book of the same name, a suburban family faces peril from the “Airborne Toxic Event,” in which chemical waste is spewed upon their small town. Under Baumbach’s direction and led by his frequent collaborators Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, it’s sure to be unlike any disaster movie we’ve ever seen.
Here’s the logline from Netflix: “At once hilarious and horrifying, lyrical and absurd, ordinary and apocalyptic, White Noise dramatizes a contemporary American family’s attempts to deal with the mundane conflicts of everyday life while grappling with the universal mysteries of love, death, and the possibility of happiness in an uncertain world.”
Sounds like a tall (if somewhat vague) order, but Driver seems capable of navigating this movie’s many moods. As Jack Gadney, a professor of Hitler studies at the local college, he perfects his driest Dad line delivery. “What does it matter what they’re doing in other cars,” he chides his children, who are observing their fleeing neighbors to know “how scared” they should be. Later, he mysteriously narrates, “May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan.”
Appearing alongside Driver and Gerwig (more like her wig in this movie, right?) are Raffey Cassidy, Alessandro Nivola, Jodie Turner-Smith, Lars Eidinger, Don Cheadle and André Benjamin (a.k.a. André 3000). White Noise is Netflix’s first film to open the Venice Film Festival; it’s also the first film ever to open both Venice (in late August) and the New York Film Festival (in October). The film does not yet have a premiere date on the streaming platform, though the teaser promises it’s “coming soon.”
29 Comments
But will they actually use music from Airborne Toxic Event?
No, to save time and money he will use Noah Baumbach’s Imaginary Dragons That Resulted From A Chemical Romance At The Disco Over The Weekend In A Morning Jacket Without Hats.
I see he took the Being John Malkovich route of frumping your cast up.
That, my friend, is how you get Oscar to sit up on his little golden pedestal and take notice!
That’s not frumpiness. That’s just the 80s, baby!
“I’m sorry I’m a bit tired from the entire can of Aqua-Net I dumped onto my head!”
That’s actually a more flattering hairstyle on Adam Driver.
I loved reading the book in class. Tried to come back to it on my own and just couldn’t bother with how much I was bored by DeLillo’s writing after going through “Americana” first.
“Noah Baumbach’s films are filled with little, personal disasters,”
so are these threads.
Kinja: “At once hilarious and horrifying, lyrical and absurd, ordinary and apocalyptic”
someone broke out the thesaurus amirite? LOL
The thesaurus from the last Jurassic Park was so realistic!
realistic enough to scare the excrement out of me
Your mom is filled with little, personal disasters!My apologies, I don’t even know you.
Wonder if this will include all the psychological stuff about Jack and Babette’s overriding fear of death, especially since they seem to be a lot younger in this adaptation. And all the stuff with the miracle drug feels like it will seem badly dated in this era of pharmaceuticals.
“Go AWAY, Airborne Toxic Event!”
Adam Driver looks like a dad to the max in this thing.
My sentiment is generally: “I like these people, and generally like this genre – color me intrigued”. So I suppose that’s a successful teaser!
I gave this book to my Dad after reading and enjoying it.My Dad: Hitler studies? That’s ridiculous.Me: It’s supposed to be.My Dad: Ohhhhhhhh
Wow, that trailer showed me absolutely no clues what this movie is about.
At one level, I question how any movie can do Don DeLillo justice, but I also thought the same about Thomas Pynchon until Inherent Vice proved it could be done. So I’m cautiously optimistic.
This novel’s plot is very conducive to a film adaptation, IMO. More so than other DeLillo novels like “Libra” or “Underworld” that play around with plot structure. “White Noise” has a straightforward series of events and plot escalation.
I seem to be one of the few who thought David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Cosmopolis was actually pretty damn good (its average ratings from viewers on IMDB and other sites are very low). White Noise offers the opportunity for some more “cinematic” stuff, so I’m holding out hope. I never really pictured Noah Baumbach as the guy to helm a White Noise adaptation, though I’m cautiously optimistic as well.
Not sure if anybody is interested, but I’m not a fan of this director or these actors.
Tell us more.
I know the book predates this film by over two decades but the “airborne toxic event” (or close enough) with a married couple trying to naviagte it was in a film called “Right at Your Door” in 2006.
From the images, this looks like Adam Driver cosplaying Fred Armisen
I am begging the gods they don’t ruin one of my favourite books of all time. I really thought it was un-filmable. How will they film just swathes of text about the fulfilment of grocery shopping and laundry lists of domestic items….I’m holding my breathe.