I'm sorry, I don't want to step into anyone's lily field soul, but it's very hard to take something this incoherent, rambling, and disjointed seriously. Is it a great adaptation of Don Delillo's novel? Probably. But this does not change the fact that the end result is as if 3 films with completely different moods, themes, pacing and dramaturgy were cut side by side, with the demand that they would make some meaningful narrative arc. This is a 2 hour and 15 minute long audio-visual madness smoothie, and not the good kind. It's about as successful as Cosmopolis. And we know how great that one turned out. Capitalism is shaking in it's boots...
White noise. An apt title, although the movie is not even suitable for background noise. The characters are lifeless and unsympathetic, the dialogues (if you can even call them that, because pretentious parallel monologues would be more appropriate) are irritating and artificial, the mood is bizarre and disconnected even in the most dramatic moments due to the weird and completely unnecessary black humor, the story is nonsense mess (sometimes it seems like it's going in an interesting direction, but then drops it to do something else entirely, only to drop that too before any meaningful conclusion and yes, not having an actual conclusion could be meaningful, but not here), and as for the weak, dotted line narrative arc, whatever lesson the film wanted to convey about man, life, death, consumerism, or the internal dynamics of dysfunctional families, it fails irreparably because it loses all meaning when presented so badly. White Noise is one of the worst celluloid pieces of trash I've seen recently. It is infuriatingly disoriented, and what's even more infuriating is that while it's disidentified, somehow it manages to act convinced of its own importance and comes forward with the confidence that it's destined to at least solve the mystery of the universe, but even a four-step IKEA furniture assembly manual is more complex than this.
And those who think they find value in Noah Baumbach's absurdist fever dream, and praise it for the very reason that every sane person condemns it: I hope you will praise the "innovative intention" with the same fervor when, say, your newly bought house is turns out to be a random pile of bricks, tiles, pieces of glass, pipes, wires, planks and cans of paint. Don't let your fixed idea of the house limit the stormy artistic freedom of a creator! It's a masterpiece, you just don't get it, dude! Exploring the human condition? Don't make me laugh! How can anyone with a serious face praise the depth of the way White Noise deals with the topic of mortality when we have movies like Amour, Ikiru, The Seventh Seal, Sunset Limited, The Seventh Continent, Youth, The Fountain...etc? If you're a snob, at least have taste...
White noise. An apt title, although the movie is not even suitable for background noise. The characters are lifeless and unsympathetic, the dialogues (if you can even call them that, because pretentious parallel monologues would be more appropriate) are irritating and artificial, the mood is bizarre and disconnected even in the most dramatic moments due to the weird and completely unnecessary black humor, the story is nonsense mess (sometimes it seems like it's going in an interesting direction, but then drops it to do something else entirely, only to drop that too before any meaningful conclusion and yes, not having an actual conclusion could be meaningful, but not here), and as for the weak, dotted line narrative arc, whatever lesson the film wanted to convey about man, life, death, consumerism, or the internal dynamics of dysfunctional families, it fails irreparably because it loses all meaning when presented so badly. White Noise is one of the worst celluloid pieces of trash I've seen recently. It is infuriatingly disoriented, and what's even more infuriating is that while it's disidentified, somehow it manages to act convinced of its own importance and comes forward with the confidence that it's destined to at least solve the mystery of the universe, but even a four-step IKEA furniture assembly manual is more complex than this.
And those who think they find value in Noah Baumbach's absurdist fever dream, and praise it for the very reason that every sane person condemns it: I hope you will praise the "innovative intention" with the same fervor when, say, your newly bought house is turns out to be a random pile of bricks, tiles, pieces of glass, pipes, wires, planks and cans of paint. Don't let your fixed idea of the house limit the stormy artistic freedom of a creator! It's a masterpiece, you just don't get it, dude! Exploring the human condition? Don't make me laugh! How can anyone with a serious face praise the depth of the way White Noise deals with the topic of mortality when we have movies like Amour, Ikiru, The Seventh Seal, Sunset Limited, The Seventh Continent, Youth, The Fountain...etc? If you're a snob, at least have taste...