Don DeLillo’s postmodern 1985 novel White Noise has been described, like many of the author’s works, as “unfilmable”, rendering screen adaptations difficult. But director Noah Baumbach has tackled the material, resulting in his own White Noise, made for Netflix.
Starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, the movie is a contemporary satire, a blend of both comedy and horror. Driver plays a college professor of “Hitler studies”, who is married to his extremely private counterpart, played by Gerwig. Their family’s quiet suburban life is shaken up when an airborne accident casts chemical waste throughout their town.
White Noise has a huge cast, with Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola, May Nivola, Lars Eidinger, Andre Benjamin, and Jodie Turner-Smith also starring. This is Baumbach and Driver’s latest project together, following Marriage Story (2019).
The movie will open the 60th New York Film Festival next month, with the film festival’s artistic director, Dennis Lim, calling it “an unequivocal triumph”. We’ll have to wait until it hits Netflix to see for ourselves — the streaming date is TBC.