‘White Noise’ Review: Noah Baumbach Turns Don DeLillo’s 1985 Novel Into a Domestic Dystopian Period Piece Top-Heavy with Big Themes
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic As a filmmaker, Noah Baumbach has always been a dyed-in-the-wool dramatic realist, talky coastal neurotic division.
He hasn’t always been as good at it as he is today; “The Squid and The Whale” (2005), the divorce drama that established his reputation and is held in supremely high regard by many cinephiles, isn’t half the movie that “Marriage Story” is.
The latter film was Baumbach’s culminating achievement after 25 years as a writer-director, and it brought his strengths to a new pitch of mastery: his ability to nail the dynamics of troubled relationships in all their frayed layers, his extraordinary skill with actors, and the nimble levity of his dialogue, which emerges from the human comedy as surely it did in the great films of Woody Allen and Paul Mazursky.
With “Marriage Story,” Baumbach enjoyed the kind of success that independent filmmakers dream of. So it’s no surprise, in a way, that his first film since then, “White Noise” (which was given the honored slot of opening the Venice Film Festival today), is different from anything he’s ever done before.
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