Female Film Critics 24/375
Advertised as an absurdist comedy, Noah Baumbach’s White Noise is neither fanciful nor funny. Adapted by Baumbach from Dom DiLillo’s minimalist satire, it revolves around how a Midwestern family in the 1980s copes with an environmental disaster and their fears of death.
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White Noise is just that – a bunch of white noise. Psycho babble. Constant talking over one another about the state of the world and the well being of one particular family in 1985 America. Jack and Babette are an existential Mike and Carol Brady. Divorcées with a blended family who must learn to get along with each other as well as the ever changing world. While grappling with consumerism on the home front, the tackle fear and the unknown when forced to evacuate their neighborhood due to an Airborne Toxic Event,
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In White Noise, Noah Baumbach again, and comically, proves he knows exactly how to excavate the dynamic inner workings of a family and the dysfunctional society which empowers its members. At face value, the ironically named Gladney family offers a spectrum of amusing individuals. Central is J.A.K. i.e., Jack, Professor of Hitler Studies at the College-on-the-Hill, proudly lectures in the classroom.
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It’s also one of those films that never lets you forget you’re watching a film, with a stagy quality that feels like you’ve been invited to see Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern, Ray Liotta and Alan Alda one-up each other in an exclusive acting workshop with Baumbach providing slightly outlandish material liberally sourced from his own life.
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You know the feeling when you have a very painful scab on your knee and you keep picking at it? That’s what writer/director Noah Baumbach has created in this bitter, corrosive tale about the dissolution of a marriage. Beginning as ‘cinema verite,’ recalling the 1960s French film movement which featured natural actions and authentic dialogue, it inexplicably then morphs into near-farce and melodic metaphors.
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Writer/director Noah Baumbach tackles one of everyone’s most difficult experiences in Marriage Story, that is, the dissolution of an intimate relationship that also includes a cherished, young son. Adam Driver as husband Charlie and Scarlett Johansson as wife Nicole delve deep into painful emotional territory in a narrative alternately sweet, even amusing, tender, and, ultimately, agonizing.
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Noah Baumbach’s films are all about the tangles and untangling of relationships and, while they aren’t written entirely from a female perspective, they always present complex and compelling female characters with strong and well-defined objectives. From his own male perspective, Baumbach writes female characters with convincing authenticity.
Read moreI suspect the extravagant praise lavished on Noah Baumbach’s films (“Frances Ha,” “Greenberg”) comes from those who can relate to
Read moreIn his delicious new outing, Noah Baumbach expands on the issues that bedeviled Ben Stiller as the eponymous protagonist of
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