White Noise
Director: Noah Baumbach Run Time: 135 min. Rating: R Release Year: 2022
Starring: Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, May Nivola, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola
Jack Gladney, professor of Hitler studies at The-College-on-the-Hill, husband to Babette, and father to four children/stepchildren, is torn asunder by a chemical spill from a rail car that releases an “Airborne Toxic Event”, forcing Jack to confront his biggest fear – his own mortality.
Noah Baumbach is the son of two film critics, Georgia Brown and Jonathan Baumbach (also a writer). His studies at Vassar College were the subject of his first film (made as he was 26 years old), Kicking and Screaming (1995). His second major picture, made ten years later, The Squid and the Whale (2005) was no less autobiographical but went back further in his personal history, back to the time when his parents separated. Recounting this past trauma and its aftermath earned Noah a selection at the Sundance Film Festival, three Golden Globe nominations and a best screenplay Oscar nomination. From then on his career was launched and his output became more regular with Margot at the Wedding (2007) starring Nicole Kidman and his wife Jennifer Jason Leigh, Greenberg (2010), filmed in Los Angeles, with Ben Stiller and Greta Gerwig. Back in New york, where he lives, he was the director (and co-author with his main actress, Greta Gerwig) of the bittersweet art house success Frances Ha (2012). Besides directing films, he also co-writes some with Wes Anderson, a good friend of his, and is the author of humor columns in the New Yorker.
“Driver brings something both salty and haunted to Jack, and Gerwig feels like a beating heart, alive to every sunburst and storm cloud of her emotional weather.”~ Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly
“With White Noise, Baumbach marks his exit from intimate independent film scopes and minimalist aesthetics, in turn triumphantly announcing his entrance into the big, brightly colored world of major studio productions, the coming of a new Baumbach.” ~ Luke Hicks, Paste Magazine
Drama