Ever had a near-death moment? I do. More than a quarter of a century ago, myrental car slid into a ravine with rocks like shark teeth. Time became viscousslow-motion. My last thought before I lost consciousness: “Damn, the car isuninsured! That will cost money.”
It turned out well: by braking full in blind panic – normally a discouragementduring a skid – the car scraped onto the pebbles and folded itself around alarge boulder. Since then I doubt. Do you think about your loved ones in thelast second of your life, does life play out on your retina like a movie? Idon’t know what happens during the real dying, when the body producesfascinating stimulants like DMT. But as long as you’re conscious, you’rethinking about something pretty random, I’m afraid. After all, we trainourselves all our lives not to think about death. Why would our brain do that?moment supreme then suddenly?
What we repress secretly obsessed is the tenor of Don DeLillo’s influentialnovel white noise with which he broke through to a large audience in 1985.white noise has now been filmed in a very inventive, swinging way bydirector Noah Baumbach. Quite a task, because already has white noise plot,it lacks characters in a way. At least: the narrator’s voice of Professor Jack– JAK – Gladney describes characters, but when you hear them talk, it’s morelike a circle of Don DeLillos entangled in a verbal spider web of paradoxes,fallacies, philosophical insights, factoids and nonsense.
white noise continues to be relevant satire on extreme consumerism, mediaoverload, leaning on technology, pill use, academic navel-gazing. The fullpostmodern life, in fact, which tells us that safety, comfort, self-realization and entertainment are our birthright and sickness and death atragedy or a monstrous injustice. At the same time, the only meaning of lifethat we can still discover is life extension. So we – also in this newspaper –are obsessed with what to do and what not to do. We hide death in medical-technological procedures, which gives a sense of control and then again wedon’t, because we know better. We’re going to die. A tsunami could hit ustomorrow. Rituals and acceptance of loss of control are believed to give morepeace of mind.
Verbal barrage
Filmmaker Noah Baumbach tries it in white noise both: dissecting De Lillo’sunderlying themes and making a plot-driven film. He succeeds wonderfully, in asimilar but different way to David Cronenberg, who wrote Don DeLillo’s novelin 2013. Cosmopolis filmed. Cronenberg translated DeLillo’s fluid, flow-of-consciousness style into a dreamy underwater world of a young banker zippingthrough Manhattan in the bubble of his limousine for a haircut.
white noise by Noah Baumbach is not dreamy, rather episodic, satirical andconfrontational: a verbal barrage that forces you to stay focused. There areassociative musings, pointed dialogues and scenes that frolic with genre andperiod. When disaster strikes – the ‘airborne toxic event’ – the film becomesa Spielbergian sf epic and even a 1980s action comedy for the whole family.The finale feels more like Cronenberg and John Carpenter: dingy,claustrophobic horror. And then there must be a delicious MTV music video in asupermarket. Live! La-la-la-la.
The main theme – modern terror of death – is immediately light-heartedlyshowcased through a lecture on car crashes in American visual culture. If you– like almost any film – ignore the reality of crushed bodies and severedlimbs, then it becomes a perfect representation of American innocence andoptimism, Professor Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle) tells his students. More andmore, more and more, more and more beautiful: mounds of crumpled chrome,orange fireballs, double somersaults, triple Rittbergers. Fun!
That’s Don DeLillo’s sarcasm; even without Aristotle, you understand the fearsa culture safely experiences and drifts through that boundless violence andapocalyptic devastation that we love to watch. Quickly, a plane crash on TV, achild screams white noise , then the entire Gladney family rushes to thepicture tube for that instant rush of catharsis. Such a plane crash shakes usawake for a second from the gray brain fog of information and petty worriesthat the news, advertising and life continuously pour over us.
Fate
The plot then? Professor Jack Gladney (Adam Driver) has a large, busy and funfamily with Babette (Greta Gerwig). In the late 1960s, Jack became a magnetfor students and funds by founding the popular Hitler Studies school; hisguilty secret is that he still doesn’t speak German. Jack lives a secure lifein a sleepy college town and an academic environment in the grip of hype. Forexample, Jack lends his, and Hitler’s, prestige to his friend Murray (DonCheadle) who wants to set up an Elvis department. The duo attracts attentionwith a theatrical, superficial and funny comparison of Der Führer and TheKing, who turn out to be kindred spirits.
Then disaster strikes: after a train collision, a menacing black cloud hangson the horizon. Nyodine D, knows Jack’s son Heinrich. A by-product ofinsecticide. “That kills cockroaches, Nyodine D kills the rest.” As men inhazmat suits show up, Jack and Babette convince each other like bunnies in theheadlights that nothing is wrong. “Not to worry the children.” Meanwhile, thecollision is scaled up to an ‘airborne toxic event’ and the symptoms ofpalpitations and a feeling of déjà vu escalate to convulsions, miscarriages,coma, cancer, death.
Once the sirens sound, denial turns into blind panic. In the chaoticevacuation, apocalyptic Christians and far-right militia members are suddenlytapped influencers. Jack appears to have been exposed to Nyodine D for toolong. “Am I going to die?”, he asks an expert. Not in itself, is his answer.No one knows exactly what Nyodine D does to people, but it can’t be much good.
Jack shudders. Death has penetrated his body, the seed has been sown.Although, in the final analysis, little has changed in his situation. Soon hewill die. The third act – when the family has returned home – revolves aroundmother Babette. He secretly takes pills from the mysterious Dylar brand.Babette goes to great lengths to get hold of the pills.
What is Dylan? What is Nyodine D? It is death that we fear and the way wesuppress that fear. Both are synthetic, because that is how we have learned tolive. Completely artificial. white noise is a very interesting movie.