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White Noise

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Release: Friday, November 25, 2022 (limited)

👀 Netflix

Written by: Noah Baumbach

Directed by: Noah Baumbach

Starring: Adam Driver; Greta Gerwig; Don Cheadle

Distributor: Netflix

 

 

***/*****

White Noise is a movie with a lot going on. Just when you think the story is about to end it finds new batteries and keeps going. Shifting through multiple themes, genres and tones, this sprawling exploration of social and existential anxiety features a lot of the elements that have made Noah Baumbach a uniquely observant filmmaker, but it also finds him stretched as he tries to cover so much ground in a reasonable amount of time.

Baumbach’s third film for Netflix (following his Oscar-winning Marriage Story and the ensemble family drama The Meyerowitz Stories) is an adaptation of a 1985 Don DeLillo novel the cognoscenti have deemed “un-filmable.” With its potpourri of themes and an assortment of characters frazzled by their own fears, quirks and suspicions, White Noise is absurdist, complicated comedy that requires a fine directorial touch. Baumbach needs to be more of a sound engineer as he searches for the right mix, moving all sorts of dials as he balances big set pieces, tricky dialogue and nuanced characters — all while perpetuating this frenzied climate of angst that feels maybe too real.

Split into three distinct acts and rolling the clock back to the 1980s, the film follows an upper-middle-class family in suburban Ohio as they try to deal with life in upheaval following a local disaster. The first forty-ish minutes lay out the pieces of a family dynamic that is both hectic and strangely stable (for a Baumbach movie). Patriarch Jack Gladney (Adam Driver) is a college professor with a dubiously specific area of focus who spends much of his day basking in the company of his fellow intellectuals, particularly amused by the poetic and quite possibly psychotic diatribes of Murray Siskind (a scene-stealing Don Cheadle), a so-called expert on American culture who just may spin off the planet one day with his crackpot theories.

Jack descends from this high throne each day and happily embraces the chaos at home with his wife Babette (Greta Gerwig), a postural therapist, and their four children. They’ve both been married multiple times before and run their marriage with a blunt honesty that manifests most memorably in their morbid pillow talk. Heinrich (Sam Nivola) and Steffie (May Nivola) are Jack’s, while Denise (Raffey Cassidy) is Babette’s and their youngest son, Wilder, they conceived together. The blended family dynamic means there’s never a dull moment and questions about the world around them abound — especially when Heinrich, who’s always on top of current events, begins hearing radio reports of a toxic chemical spill that could affect the entire area.

A major but well-handled transition leads into what feels like a different movie altogether, not to mention a total departure from anything resembling the chatterbox pictures the writer/director has built his career on. Fortunately Baumbach has his two most reliable commodities in Driver and Gerwig to help steer the way. The seasoned actors never seem fazed by the challenge, even when their characters are beginning to lose it. The so-named “airborne toxic event” prompts an evacuation and the Griswolds Gladneys load up in the family station wagon, soon swept up in the confusion and herded through a series of disorienting events that include makeshift quarantine sites, car chases through the woods (one of the best and funniest scenes by far) and strange encounters with a creepy, balding man whose face the camera can’t quite find.

White Noise is a long and meandering film — a low-key odyssey that, despite its chameleonic genre shifts, always stays anxious, always stays weird. Yet what has been for the most part entertainingly bizarre becomes more laborious down the final stretch as the story again reshapes into something more intimate and its core themes become crystallized. Everyone has been allowed to return home but life has not exactly returned to normal. The air may have cleared but the lingering effects of a traumatic event have infiltrated the house. Suddenly we’re stalking out seedy motel rooms and being treated by atheist nuns in a paranoia-fueled thriller that grows like a tumor off the main narrative. It’s the least convincing stretch of story by a muddy-river mile. 

On the whole, Baumbach succeeds in adapting someone else’s work without sacrificing his own idiosyncratic style. Ironically it’s in a passage where things are falling apart where he too seems to lose his grip. But he merges together so many concepts and pulls together three-dimensional characters such that these moments feel more like hiccups than major hang-ups. White Noise is messy, but it’s a colorful mess.

You won’t see this everyday . . .

Moral of the Story: Those who are already acclimated to the filmmaker’s unique style (specifically the way he writes dialogue and characters) will probably have an easier time navigating through White Noise‘s many and complicated movements. It’s an audacious movie that can be just as interesting in its blockbuster-y moments as it is when roaming the grocery store aisles. A uniquely whacky experience. 

Rated: R

Running Time: 136 mins. 

Quoted: “There are two kinds of people in this world, killers and diers. Most of us are diers.” 

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited. 

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com 

20th Century Women

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Release: Friday, January 20, 2017

[Theater]

Written by:  Mike Mills

Directed by: Mike Mills

Fun seems like a clumsy word to describe a film trading in themes such as female empowerment and disaffected youth. But let’s call it what it is; 20th Century Women IS fun. Enlightening, entertaining, satisfying, significant — all the above. It celebrates maturity and individuality with a blitheness that is completely disarming. Therapeutic, even.

Mike Mills’ Oscar-nominated, original screenplay explores the lives of three women living in sunny 1970s SoCal. Former President Jimmy Carter’s “crisis of confidence” speech serves as a tone-setter in this beguiling but often dark dramatic comedy starring Annette Bening as Dorothea Fields, a boarding house landlord who enlists two of her tenants to help raise her son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann’s third feature film credit) during a period of sweeping social and political change.

Dorothea is divorced when she gives birth to Jamie at the age of 40. Coming-of-age story is mostly preoccupied with the evolution of this non-traditional mother-son dynamic, in which a substantial age gap presents many a unique challenge as Jamie starts coming into his own. But the film also uses its two other free-spirited principals in Greta Gerwig‘s photographer Abbie and Elle Fanning‘s girl-next-door Julie to stake out greater thematic territory, including gender politics, burgeoning sexuality and personal responsibility — although invariably each subplot circles back to the family dynamic and the challenges of parenthood.

Abbie finds Gerwig in her element, a character with all the hipster affectations and quirks we have come to expect of an actor who’s very much a hipster at heart. Abbie’s journey through the story mines some of the greatest emotional depths, what with her having survived cervical cancer but being told by doctors she can’t have children. Contrast her against Julie, for whom possibilities are almost too endless. She’s a leaf on the breeze, drifting between her own home and Jamie’s bedroom where she frequently spends the night to get away from her psychologist mother who is convinced her daughter’s behavior is diagnosable. Meanwhile Jamie finds himself firmly locked into the Friend Zone.

Billy Crudup also stars as Dorothea’s handyman, playing a role that similarly subverts expectations as a potential father-figure for Jamie. But his influence is frequently subdued by Dorothea who argues Jamie doesn’t need a male role model. That’s why she tapped the girls for their help. (Speaking of Crudup — how Almost Famous is his ’70s ‘stache in this movie?) Her would-be suitor isn’t on an island though; William is also in constant search of that thing that will give his life meaning.

Mills outfits a compelling story with an authentic, nostalgic retro flare. Black-and-white Polaroids occasionally punctuate the frame, convincingly meshing Bening’s ambassador for independent women with examples of actual people living the real thing; the use of soft color and lighting creates a visual collage of a bygone era rich in period detail. The soundtrack is an experimental mix of the California sound and punk-rock bands fighting back against the establishment. The harmony that is created out of all these elements is what is going to earn Mills a rightful spot amongst the Cameron Crowes and Richard Linklaters of the industry.

Scrapbook-like flourishes also downplay the weight of the material without ever distracting from or trivializing it. 20th Century Women is more often than not an upbeat adventure but don’t let all the conviviality trick you into thinking the movie takes its material lightly. This is a movie that wants to erase the word taboo from the dictionary. Bening fearlessly steers us through the rough waters of belated parenthood and single motherhood. Performances are uniformly outstanding, but she’s the rock, the rock her son so desperately needs, especially in these confusing times.

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4-5Recommendation: Refreshingly forward-thinking movie eschews traditional gender roles and provides an incredible showcase for Annette Bening’s considerable talents. I want to say all these fancy things about this movie, but what I need to emphasize is just how thoroughly enjoyable it all is. I really loved this movie. 

Rated: R

Running Time: 119 mins.

Quoted: “Wondering if you’re happy is a great shortcut to being depressed.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com 

Frances Ha

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Frances Ha

Release: Friday, May 17, 2013 (limited)

[Theater]

Oh, Greta Gerwig — where have you been all my life? I’m sure many guys have asked you this, and even though you’re going to let my forthcoming flattery roll off you and your leather jacket like water off a duck, I’m going to ask this anyway: Can I go out with you? Please?

No?

Well, that was to be expected. Gerwig’s character in Frances Ha (I think you might guess her name relatively quickly) is at once committed to something, and then not so much. That’s either by choice or by the forceful hand of reality. That’s actually not entirely accurate. Her character is bound by circumstance. Sometimes she’s doing something strange (like, really strange — to the point of seeming delusional) and other times she’s making moves we all likely would make in these particular moments. Whatever she’s doing though, she’s doing what a girl has to do to get along in this life, even though she doesn’t know quite exactly what to do or how to do it.

She’s a New Yorker with no high-rise apartment. Actually, make that really no apartment at all. Frances is caught in the beginning of the movie in an awkward transition between a soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend’s small loft and, well, the next. . . . place. She ends up rooming with a few new friends — two guys who seem to be on tracks of their own relative success. But this also does not work out for much longer, as she finds herself struggling to make even the minimum rent payment. It seems that nothing is going to work out for our giddy protagonist for too long.

The movie is paced as such. It’s like flipping through a photo album, each photo on the page telling a brief yet intimate and complete story. The majority of scenes that make up Frances Ha last only but a few minutes, but are such great snapshots of life it is impossible to argue they are too brief. Director Noah Baumbach pieces each snapshot together with utmost skill, forming a unique cinematic experience that plays out more like a relic of the 1940s or 50s. Maybe a lot of that  is impressed upon me thanks to the exquisite locations (Manhattan, Paris, etc.). Maybe it’s because it’s shot totally in black-and-white. Maybe I was taken away because of my hopelessly misplaced sense of romanticism.

Frances is an aspiring dancer whose apprenticeship with a New York dance company is really taking her nowhere. Her best friend Sophie is moving out to chase dreams of her own, leaving Frances in some kind of a daze. Her parents are unable to help out financially, though they wish they could. Frances is “un-datable.” Indeed, this film is very much steeped in real world issues and sentiment, and if you don’t mind a narrative that takes its time in finding just where the sweet spots in life are, this is the film for you. At points it’s easy to be thrown off as to where we are really going with it all, and the ending certainly can sneak up on you.

But it’s imperative with a film like this to enjoy all the simple things as well as the complex; Frances’s walks about town are as integral to the story as her idealistic conversations with Sophie; with her parents; with her peers at the dance company.

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4-0Recommendation: There’s no denying this film’s awkwardness. There’s a lot of charm to that awkwardness, though and it was very enjoyable to see a previously unknown actress (to me at least) blossom into a soon-to-be star with this role. Greta Gerwig is fantastic and is worth paying to see this movie even if you know little to nothing about it. I highly recommend this one.

Rated: R

Running Time: 86 mins.

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com