White Noise is an absurdist comedy drama film directed by Noah Baumbach, based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Don DeLillo. Tropes for the book go here.
A professor of Hitler Studies in Ohio, Jack (Adam Driver) is trying to keep his family's anxiety in check over a chemical spill that causes the mysterious Airborne Toxic Event. As the mysterious Airborne Toxic Event causes more mysterious symptoms, his wife Babette (Greta Gerwig) becomes more unpredictable, his children are consumed by mass hysteria, and his colleague Murray (Don Cheadle) wants to do for Elvis Studies what Jack did for Hitler.
Not to be confused with the 2005 supernatural horror thriller film with Michael Keaton.
This film provides examples of:
- Adapted Out: The movie does not feature Jack's CIA agent ex-wife, nor his daughter by her, which streamlines the story somewhat. Also absent are Heinrich's friend Orest and the family of black Jehovah's Witnesses that Jack meets during the evacuation.
- Black Comedy: The family's reaction to watching a violent car wreck ahead of them during the evacuation.
- Dance Party Ending: In a supermarket, containing even characters who'd only appeared in one scene.
- The Film of the Book: Of White Noise.
- Genre-Busting: For the most part, the movie is a realistic and grounded comedy-drama, but several moments evoke science fiction, such as the sight of the massive toxic cloud, with purplish lightning. Winnie's laboratory is full of tubes of bubbling liquid, like a campy Mad Scientist Laboratory. Not to mention that Dylar is straight out of science fiction. However, the film uses none of the storytelling conventions expected of science fiction, which means it sits squarely in the middle of the axis between "realism" and "genre".
- Hollywood Thin: In the book, Babette is described as overweight. Gerwig's Babette is thin. She zigzags Adaptational Attractiveness, as Babette is described as being beautiful despite her weight, though it's true that Gerwig is more "traditionally" attractive.
- Insistent Terminology: The "Airborne Toxic Event" has a number of names that get argued over, including "feathery plume" and "billowing black cloud".
- Mythology Gag: "new body rhumba", the song by LCD Soundsystem backing the film's Dance Party Ending, features Nancy Whang chanting "Pana! Sonic! Pana! Sonic!" The
Working Title of the original novel was Panasonic. The word "Panasonic" also appears as a Non Sequitur during Jack's surreal Imagine Spot about Babette having sex with Mr. Gray, which is another nod to the original novel. - Never Trust a Trailer: The trailer pushes the toxic event and the ensuing aftermath. In actuality it takes a while to get there, and then that storyline ends abruptly with an hour of movie to go.
