White Noise (2022)

This weird stream of consciousness movie about a 1980s Ohio family has its moments (see below) but didn't really do it for us, despite the talents of Greta Gerwig and Adam Driver playing a couple named Babette and Jack. Obviously we had to watch it. Don Cheadle plays a fellow professor of Driver's.

Noah Baumbach, Gerwig's life partner, directs and adapted the screenplay from the "acclaimed"1985 Don DeLillo novel which this Babette and Jack each tried unsuccessfully to read at the time, decades before we met.

There is lots of dialogue, somewhat stilted, and a subplot involving an "airborne toxic event."

This movie is not for everyone. Two hours and sixteen minutes of it was way too long for us. But here are two of the aforementioned moments: a dual/duel lecture (Driver and Cheadle in the same college classroom alternating teaching, intercut with a train/truck crash) and the credits sequence, during which all the characters dance in the colorful supermarket, with the credits carefully placed so as not to block the view of the dancers. And here is that final sequence, over seven minutes long, with the song by LCD Soundsystem, and without the lettering.

The ever-reliable composer Danny Elfman's score can be streamed on Apple Music and here is a list of songs. Production designer Jess Gonchor has been nominated by his peers for an award for period film in the Art Directors Guild. I liked the hair (Mia Neal heads up the hair department), with Driver's receding hairline and Gerwig's huge perm.

Gerwig was last blogged for acting in Isle of Dogs, Driver for House of Gucci, Cheadle for Avengers: Infinity War, Baumbach for Marriage Story, Elfman for Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot, and Gonchor for Little Women, which Gerwig directed. Neal won an Oscar for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, among other accolades.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics' noise is subdued--their average of 64% is tempered with raves--and its audiences have gone silent at 32.

We watched it on Netflix on January 11.