Culture Representation: Taking place in 1964 in an unnamed city in Massachusetts, the dramatic film “Eileen” (based on the 2015 novel of the same film) features a cast of predominantly white characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A shy administrative assistant at a juvenile detention center becomes enamored with a newly hired psychiatrist at the same job, and the two women do their own kind of pushback on what society expects from women.
Culture Audience: “Eileen” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, the book on which the movie is based, and movies about repression and mental illness that take an unexpected turn.
Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway in “Eileen” (Photo courtesy of Neon)
Much like the movie’s namesake, “Eileen” appears to be going one way and then goes in a very different direction. The cast members’ intriguing performances are the main reason to watch this psychological drama, which takes a very dark turn near the end. The movie is weakened by a vague ending that doesn’t give the closure and answers that were given in the book.
Directed by William Oldroyd, “Eileen” is based on Ottessa Moshfegh’s 2015 novel of the same name. Moshfegh and Luke Goebel co-wrote the adapted screenplay for “Eileen.” The movie had its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
“Eileen” takes place during a bitterly cold winter in 1964, in an unnamed Massachusetts city not far from Boston. (“Eileen” was actually filmed in New York and New Jersey.) Eileen Dunlop (played by Thomasin McKenzie) is a 24-year-old bachelorette, who lives a dreary existence with her alcoholic, widower father Jim Dunlop (played by Shea Whigham), who is a former police chief. In addition to his alcoholism, there are indications that Jim has an undiagnosed mental illness.
Jim is verbally and physically abusive to Eileen, who is miserable living with her father, but she can’t afford to move out of the house. Eileen doesn’t report the abuse because she knows that Jim still has friends in the local police force. As the story goes on, it becomes clear that Eileen has a co-dependent, love/hate relationship with her father. She hates his abuse, but she also wants to feel needed, because he depends on her to take care of him.
Eileen has an older sister named Joanne, who is married and hasn’t come by to visit in quite some time. Jim tells Eileen in no uncertain terms that Joanne is his favorite child. During one of Jim’s many drunken rants, he tells Eileen that he wishes that Eileen were as organized as Joanne is. There are hints that Jim probably sexually abused Joanne as a child, which would explain why Joanne is keeping her distance from him as an adult.
For the past three or four years, Eileen has been working as a secretary/administrative assistant at Moorehead, a boys’ juvenile detention center, which is essentially a prison. It’s mentioned at one point in the movie that Eileen is a college dropout. At her job, Eileen isn’t very well-liked by the other secretaries in the office, because she’s quiet and keeps mostly to herself. Mrs. Murray (played by Siobhan Fallon Hogan) and Mrs. Stevens (played by Tonye Patano) are the two of the nosy co-workers who speak in gossipy and condescending tones to Eileen.
The beginning of the movie shows that Eileen is very introverted, but she’s not as prim and proper as she appears to the outside world. Eileen is kind of a kinky voyeur: She puts ice down her underwear after watching a couple’s makeout session. Eileen’s love life is non-existent, but she has vivid sexual fantasies about having sex with a Moorehead guard named Randy (played by Owen Teague), who’s about the same age as Eileen.
However, someone else on the job arouses Eileen’s sexual interest even more than Randy. Her name is Rebecca St. John (played by Anne Hathaway), who is Moorehead’s newly hired prison psychologist. Eileen is entranced with Rebecca from the moment that she meets this new co-worker. Rebecca, who is originally from New York City, looks and acts more like a glamorous movie star than a psychologist.
At one point, Rebecca tells Eileen that although she’s had plenty of boyfriends, she’s never been married. Rebecca says her dating relationships are “just for fun” and never last. Rebecca comes across as a progressive (she believes that psychedelic drugs should be used as therapy) and independent (she say she loves living by herself), which is the opposite of the conservative and stifling lifestyle that Eileen feels she is being pressured to live.
Eileen is infatuated with Rebecca’s sophisticated ways and seems to be fascinated with everything that Rebecca does. Rebecca notices this admiration and makes an effort to befriend Eileen, who is very flattered by the attention and the compliments that she gets from Rebecca. It’s obvious that Eileen wants her relationship with Rebecca to be more than a friendship, but does Rebecca feels the same way?
One day, Eileen notices Rebecca having a counseling session with an inmate named Lee Polk (played by Sam Nivola) and his mother, who is identified in the movie only as Mrs. Polk (played by Marin Ireland). Lee is in prison for murdering his father by stabbing him to death in the father’s bed. The father was a police officer who worked in the same police department as Eileen’s father Jim.
Eileen can see the counseling session through glass windows, but she can’t hear what’s being said behind closed doors. However, Eileen knows that the session ended badly because Mrs. Polk storms out and shouts, “Filthy, nasty boy!” Meanwhile, Lee smirks in reaction to seeing his mother upset.
Shortly after the session ends, Rebecca asks Eileen if she thinks Mrs. Polk is an angry woman. Eileen doesn’t know enough about Mrs. Polk to give an opinion either way. However, Eileen tells Rebecca that she thinks Lee is intelligent and that he doesn’t seem like the type to be a cold-blooded murderer.
A turning point in Eileen’s relationship with Rebecca happens when Rebecca asks Eileen to go with her to a local bar. Rebecca says it’s because she’s new to the area and wants to meet more new people. But as far as Eileen is concerned (based on how excitedly she gets ready for this meet-up), Rebecca has asked her on a date. At the bar, Rebecca will only dance with Eileen and literally shoves a man away who tries to cut in on Rebecca and Eileen dancing together.
One of the strengths of “Eileen” is how all of the principal cast members make their characters very believable. Even when not much is happening in certain scenes, the performances of McKenzie and Hathaway make viewers wonder what Eileen and Rebecca might be really thinking, compared to what they’re saying out loud. That’s an example of the compelling acting in this movie.
Viewers who don’t know what’s in the “Eileen” book or don’t know what happens in the last third of the movie probably won’t see the plot twist coming. The “Eileen” book is told from the perspective of a middle-aged Eileen looking back on her life. The “Eileen” movie does not give that retrospective context and therefore brings up questions that remain unanswered by the end of the film. However, the movie has an impeccable buildup to its most suspenseful moments, even if the ending won’t be as satisfying as some viewers hope it will be.
Neon released “Eileen” in select U.S. cinemas on December 1, 2023, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on December 8, 2023.
Culture Representation: Taking place mostly in New York state, from the mid-1940s to the mid-1980s, the dramatic film “Maestro” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy in this biopic of mega-famous composer/orchestra conductor Leonard Bernstein.
Culture Clash: Bernstein led a double life as a semi-closeted queer man who had male lovers during his entire relationship with actress Felicia Montealegre, who knew about his true sexuality and was his wife from 1951 until her death from cancer in 1978.
Culture Audience: “Maestro” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Bernstein; stars Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan; and decades-spanning biopics, even if the movie looks like it’s trying too hard to win major awards.
Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan in “Maestro” (Photo by Jason McDonald/Netflix)
“Maestro” skillfully depicts the life of a fiery and mercurial music star, even if this very flawed protagonist will leave some viewers cold because of his unrelenting narcissism and selfishness depicted throughout the movie. In this Leonard Bernstein biopic, his musical talent is a very secondary part of the story, compared to his personal relationships. Some viewers won’t like the timeline jumping and small number of musical scenes, but the acting performances are stellar.
Directed by Bradley Cooper (who co-wrote the “Maestro” screenplay with Josh Singer), “Maestro” had its world premiere at the 2023 Venice International Film Festival and its North American premiere at the 2023 New York Film Festival. Cooper stars in “Maestro” as Bernstein, the influential and very famous composer/orchestra conductor, whose best-known work includes writing the music for “West Side Story” and being the longtime music director for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Bernstein died in 1990, at the age of 72. For the purposes of this review, the real Leonard Bernstein is referred to as Bernstein, while the character of Leonard Bernstein in “Maestro” is referred to as Leonard.
“Maestro” is Cooper’s second movie as a director. He made his feature-film directorial debut with the 2018 remake of “A Star Is Born,” which is a far superior movie when it comes to authentic-looking scenes that grab people’s emotions and never let go. “Maestro” has all the characteristics of an “awards bait” movie (including Oscar-winning filmmakers Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese as producers), but many of the scenes look a little too staged. The movie’s jumpy timeline editing (the story is told in non-chronological order) gives “Maestro” a fidgety tone that might cause some viewers to lose interest by the time the movie is half-over.
“Maestro” (which takes place mostly in New York state) begins and ends with a scene taking place sometime in the 1980s, when Leonard is giving a recorded TV interview that is being filmed in what appears to be a library room in his home. The “Maestro” scenes that take place in the 1970s and 1980s are in color. Any scene taking place before the 1970s is in black and white. In the beginning of the movie, during this opening interview scene, a frail-looking Leonard plays a little bit of piano while he mumbles a few sentences. (This movie’s makeup and hairstyling are above-average, especially in the scenes with Leonard as an elderly man.)
The movie then suddenly flashes back to New York City to 1946, when Leonard wakes up in bed next to clarinetist David Oppenheim (played by Matt Bomer), his lover at the time. (There is no nudity in this movie.) Leonard (whose real name was Louis Bernstein) playfully slaps David on the rear end before jumping out of bed. At the time, Leonard was a young and famous composer/conductor on the rise in the music world, with lots of charm, confidence and enthusiasm. Leonard prefers to be called Lenny by people he knows or those whom he wants to know.
It isn’t long before social butterfly Leonard meets actress Felicia Montealegre (played by Carey Mulligan) at a party hosted by Claudio Arrau (played by Oscar Pavlo), who was Felicia’s piano instructor at the time. Felicia (who born in Costa Rica, and raised in Chile) is intelligent, witty and very self-assured. Felicia and Leonard have an instant connection expressed through flirting and banter. They soon begin dating, and he is very up front in telling her his secret: He’s also sexually attracted to men. Felicia doesn’t seem to have a problem with it because Leonard makes her happy, and he seems to genuinely love her—just not in the way that he loves men.
Leonard juggles his relationships with David and Felicia, until he decides to spend more time in a committed relationship with Felicia. When Leonard introduces Felicia to David for the first time, the eventually jilted David seems a little envious but not too bothered that Felicia has captured Leonard’s interest. Apparently, David is used to Leonard’s polyamorous ways. Felicia will never really gets used to it.
Someone who approves of Felicia is Leonard’s younger sister Shirley (played by Sarah Silverman), who is sarcastically funny and who knows about Leonard’s true sexuality. The movie depicts Shirley being at the same party where Felicia and Leonard met. Felicia and Shirley become genuine friends. Shirley and Felicia are close enough that Felicia confides in Shirley when she’s having marital problems with Leonard.
As an experienced actress in theater and television, Felicia has her own established career when she meets Leonard. As depicted in “Maestro,” Felicia’s American father Roy Elwood Cohn owns a performing arts theater where she and Leonard meet for dates. Leonard and Felicia have a quick courtship where she’s the one who brings up marriage to him first. “Let’s give it a whirl,” she smiles when they decide to get married. Leonard and Felicia get married in 1951. He was 33, while she was 29.
The movie then flashes forward to 37-year-old Leonard and 33-year-old Felicia as new parents to their first child, a daughter named Jamie. They would eventually have two more children: middle child Alexander (nicknamed Alex) and youngest child Nina. “Maestro” depicts Jamie (played as a teenager and young adult by Maya Hawke) as the child who has the closest bond to Leonard. She is curious and intelligent—just like her father.
Alex and Nina are barely in the movie. Brooklyn Rockett portrays Jamie as a child. Sam Nivola has the role of Alex as a teenager/young adult. Alexa Swinton is Nina as a teenager. Maybe the real-life Alex and Nina did not want to be featured prominently in the movie for privacy reasons. Whatever the reason is, Alex and Nina are sidelined characters with vague personalities.
When Jamie goes away to college, she is the one who asks Leonard if the gossip that she’s hearing about him is true. Jamie doesn’t come right and say what she’s heard, but Leonard knows she’s heard that he has affairs with men. Felicia has made Leonard promise never to tell their children the truth about his sexuality, so he lies to Jamie and says the gossip isn’t true, although he hesitates for a moment as if he’s on the verge of telling her the truth.
Don’t expect “Maestro” to show the inner workings of how some of Bernstein’s classics were made. There are really only two big performance scenes that show Leonard conducting an orchestra. They are masterfully filmed and impactful scenes, but then the movie goes right back to what the majority of the story is about: Leonard pursuing younger men, while Felicia tries and often fails to not be jealous.
The movie hints at but doesn’t explicitly show Leonard’s promiscuity. For example, there’s a scene where married Leonard has a pleasant conversation in a park with David and David’s wife, who have their newborn baby with them. Leonard leans in to talk to the baby and says, “Can I tell you a secret? I slept with both of your parents, but I’m reigning it in.”
The scene is played for laughs (David and his wife think that Leonard’s comment is funny), and it’s an effectively comedic moment in the movie. However, there are underlying issues with Leonard that are shown in this scene—namely, Leonard’s flippant attitude over his comment about “reigning it in” indicates that he knows his sexual antics are probably out of control and hurtful to people, but he doesn’t care enough to really stop the emotional pain he causes. His attitude is: “This is who I am. Deal with it.”
The male lover who becomes a constant companion to Leonard is Tommy Cothran (played by Gideon Glick), who was a music director at a San Francisco radio station when he met Leonard at a party in 1971. When they first meet, Leonard and Tommy flirt openly with each other in front of Felicia. And within minutes, Felicia sees Leonard and Tommy kissing in a hallway at the party. She walks away, looking hurt but not too surprised.
Later, when the relationship between Tommy and Leonard becomes more serious, Leonard insists that Tommy be treated like a member of the family. Tommy is frequently included in family activities, such as meals, trips and parties. When Tommy, Leonard and Felicia go on dates together, Felicia is the one who feels like the awkward third wheel.
At first, Felicia tries to act like she’s okay with this arrangement. But it eventually starts to bother her a lot. Felicia and Leonard have more arguments, and they decide to separate but never get divorced. The movie has hints that Leonard abused cocaine or was addicted to cocaine in the 1970s and 1980s. (Observant viewers will notice how sweaty-looking he is in his older years.)
Felicia asserting herself in her marriage and how she deals with her cancer diagnosis are among the best scenes in “Maestro.” Mulligan excels in these scenes that show Mulligan’s exceptional talent in portraying a wide range of emotions. It’s not an exaggeration to say that although the movie is called “Maestro” and it’s a Leonard Bernstein biopic, the soul of the movie is about Felicia.
Felicia also has some of the best lines in the movie. While arguing with Leonard about his deceitful double life (which she admits she’s enabled), she tells him: “There’s a saying in Chile: ‘Never stand underneath a bird that’s full of shit.’ I’ve been living under that bird for too long.” Later in the argument, Felicia makes this cutting remark to Leonard: “If you’re not careful, you’re going to die a lonely old queen.”
Meanwhile, self-absorbed Leonard utters mopey lines such as, “I feel like the world is on the verge of collapse.” It’s quite an ironic statement, when Leonard is constantly shown to be the one causing chaos in his own personal life. The problem with his attitude is that he acts as if he entitled to do what he wants because it feels good to him, even if it hurts other people. When confronted with the consequences of his actions, he acts as if everyone is uptight and wrong for not understanding him.
“Maestro” certainly is elevated by all the great talent in front of and behind the camera. However, after a while, the movie becomes a little too fixated on Leonard’s marital problems and his obsession with seducing men who are younger and less powerful than he is. (In a lecherous scene that takes place after he and Felicia have separated, Leonard is shown getting sexually involved with one his male students who is in Leonard’s orchestra class.) Cooper gives a very ambitious performance, but it all looks very calculated—a bright, polished sheen on a very troubled and complicated man.
Although technically proficient, “Maestro” needed to be more balanced in the story to show more of Leonard’s musical side. It’s like doing a feature-length biopic about a famous singer and only showing the singer perform two or three songs. The movie looks great, thanks to top-notch cinematography from Matthew Libatique, but the story is told like a book with its chapters slightly jumbled.
“Maestro” wants to have its cake and eat it too: It tries very hard to make it look like Felicia was the love of Leonard’s life, and yet he seemed to care more about making his lover Tommy happy. True love also does not inflict the type of suffering that Felicia endured in the marriage. Although she knew about Leonard’s sexuality before they got married, Felicia probably did not anticipate how his double life would be so painful to her and their children.
Bernstein certainly led a very full and accomplished life that deserves a biopic. And there are definitely plenty of reasons why “Maestro” should be seen by people, especially those who are inclined to watch biographical films about celebrities. Just don’t expect this movie to be completely cohesive or thorough in detailing major aspects of Bernstein’s life that aren’t about how his sexuality affected his personal relationships.
Netflix will release “Maestro” in select U.S. cinemas on November 22, 2023. The movie will premiere on Netflix on December 20, 2023.
Sam Nivola, Adam Driver, May Nivola, Greta Gerwig, Raffey Cassidy and Dean Moore or Henry Moore (pictured in front) in “White Noise” (Photo by Wilson Webb/Netflix)
Culture Representation: Taking place in Ohio, the comedy/drama film “White Noise” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A college professor and his family begin to see life differently after a toxic pollution disaster forces residents in their area to evacuate and take shelter in public places.
Culture Audience: “White Noise” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker Noah Baumbach; stars Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, and Don Cheadle; and comedy/drama films with life-and-death themes.
Don Cheadle and Adam Driver in “White Noise” (Photo by Wilson Webb/Netflix)
With acerbic wit about life and death, “White Noise” memorably shows how a college professor and his family cope with an unexpected evacuation from a pollution disaster. In this well-acted but uneven comedy/drama, the real disaster is dishonesty in relationships. The movie covers both familiar and unfamiliar territory for writer/director/producer Noah Baumbach, whose speciality is making movies about neurotic, middle-class people who deal with problems that they usually bring on themselves.
“White Noise,” which is based on Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel of the same name, had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in Italy and its North American premiere at the 2022 New York Film Festival in New York City. The “White Noise” movie is also set in the early-to-mid-1980s. Baumbach’s “White Noise” cinematic adaptation is quintessential Baumbach, with a talented cast who adeptly handle the verbose dialogue. In Baumbach’s movies, the characters tend to do an over-analysis of people and life, to great comedic effect.
What isn’t typical of Baumbach is for him direct a movie from an adapted screenplay. The previous movies that Baumbach has directed were from his own original screenplays. Baumbach also never done a disaster movie that will get some comparisons to the way that Steven Spielberg does disaster movies.
“White Noise” isn’t a big-budget blockbuster. However, “White Noise” does have some tense action sequences of people trying to find shelter in a disaster, in scenes that are very reminiscent of Spielberg’s 2005 version of “War of the Worlds.” There’s no outer-space alien invasion in “White Noise. The real disruption comes to members of a family who are forced to confront uncomfortable truths about themselves after they evacuate from their home during the disaster.
In “White Noise,” which takes place in an unnamed cities in Ohio, a college professor named Jack Gladney (played by Adam Driver) thinks he’s living a very safe and comfortable life where he has a lot of patriarchal control. Jack teaches the unusual subject of “advanced Nazism” at a learning institution that is never named in the movie, but is referred to as the College on the Hill. Jack usually thinks he’s the smartest person in the room at any given time (a personality trait of least one main character in a typical Baumbach film), so Jack tends to be overbearing and arrogant, but not to the point of being completely obnoxious.
Jack lives with his wife Babette (played by Greta Gerwig), who works as an activities director at a senior living center. Babette and Jack have a blended family that includes four children. Eldest child Heinrich (played by Sam Nivola), a son from Jack’s previous marriage, is about 16 years old and has a keen interest in science. The middle children are Babette’s two daughters from her previous marriage: Denise (played by Raffey Cassidy), who’s about 15 years old, and Steffie (played by May Nivola), who’s about 12 years old. Jack and Babette have a biological child together named Wilder (played by identical twins Henry Moore and Dean Moore), who’s about 4 years old.
The first third of the movie mostly shows how Jack interacts with people in his home and at work. At home, Jack and his very opinionated family frequently talk over each other and have simultaneous conversations with each other. Babette tends to be cheerful and optimistic. Jack tends to be stern and cynical. Mornings in the kitchen and dining room can be described as ordered chaos, as Heinrich, Denise and Steffie sometimes bicker, while their parents try to get everyone out of the house in time to go where they need to be.
At work, Jack takes pleasure in commanding the room with his in-depth lectures about Nazis. The movie never explains why Jack is so fascinated with Nazis (he does not endorse this hate group), but in his lectures, Jack drops hints that people need to study what the Nazis did so that atrocities like the Holocaust won’t happen again. As a history expert, Jack is profoundly awestuck by how quickly Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime took over Europe and had far-reaching effects across the world.
Jack has a friendly rapport with his Murray Suskind (played by Don Cheadle), an entertainment industry professor at the same college. In the opening scene of “White Noise,” Murray is seen giving an enthusiastic lecture about the art of car crashes in American movies. He even goes as far to say that car crashes in American movies are superior than car crashes in European movies.
Murray tells his students that these cinematic car crashes are “a long tradition of American optimism” and “self-celebration.” Murray adds, “Look past the violence, I say, and there is a wonderful, brimming spirit of innocence and fun.” Murray’s lecture is the movie’s first indication that several of the movie’s characters are living in a safe bubble that’s about to be popped.
Murray greatly admires Jack’s lecture styling, so later in the movie, there’s an amusing scene where Jack (at Murray’s invitation) is a guest speaker in Murray’s classroom. The topic is about Elvis Presley, but Jack has been asked to give information showing how Presley and Hitler had many things in common. For example, Presley and Hitler both had fanatical followings and both were “mama’s boys” with domineering mothers.
This “Presley/Hitler” lecture starts off as a dual presentation, with Murray and Jack taking turns giving factoids about Presley and Hitler. But then, Jack shows his tendency of taking control of everything he does, and Jack ends up taking over the lecture and doing all the talking. Jack gets so worked-up and passionate in his speaking that he almost acts like a pastor preaching to a congregation.
Jack’s speech culminates with Jack getting a standing ovation from everyone else in the room, including a few other faculty members who stopped by to hear Jack speak in this class. One of these co-workers is a professor named Elliot Lasher (played by André Benjamin. also known as André 3000), who’s a mild-mannered eccentric who doesn’t do much in his scenes except smile and give words of encouragement to the people around him.
Jack’s ego certainly gets a boost from this standing ovation. But within the 24 hours, his world will come crashing down with an avalanche of insecurity, deceit and mistrust. It starts off when Denise tells Jack that, in the kitchen garbage can, she found an empty prescription pill bottle owned by Babette. The prescription label on the bottle says that it contained a drug called Dylar.
Denise is worried because she can’t find Dylar in any medical book. (Remember, this story takes place in the 1980s, before the Internet existed.) Jack acts like he isn’t too worried, but deep down, he’s concerned too because he didn’t know anything about this prescription. Jack doesn’t confront or ask Babette about this secret prescription right away.
But something about this deception must have triggered something in Jack, because he starts to have harrowing nightmares that seem real. For example, he has a vision of a Jack clone or alter ego climbing into bed with him and sleeping in the place on the bed where Denise usually sleeps. In one of these nightmares, this Jack “clone” almost get suffocated by a blanket by an unseen force.
Meanwhile, a truck carrying toxic chemicals crashes into a moving train when the truck driver is distracted by grabbing a bottle of liquor from a passenger seat. It results in a massive train wreck and an explosion that destroys the truck and sends toxic chemicals in the air. The smoke can be seen for miles away.
One of the people who sees this smoke is Heinrich, who looks at it from afar with his binoculars. Heinrich heard about the train wreck on the local TV news. And he’s afraid that the toxic chemicals could pollute the air and be disaster for the area residents. Henrich tells his parents that maybe they should temporarily evacuate if the smoke comes any closer.
At first, Jack and Babette (especially Jack) are dismissive of Heinrich’s concerns. Jack says that it’s unlikely that the family will be affected by the smoke, since it’s not windy outside at the moment. And when it does get windy, Jack says that wind tends to blow in the direction that’s the opposite of their house.
It turns out that Jack is very wrong about his assumptions. The TV news descriptions of this pollution goes from being described as “a black billowing cloud” to “the airborne toxic event.” Emergency officials are ordering local residents to evacuate. Still in denial, Jack and Babette don’t think it’s that big of a deal.
But their attitude quickly changes when they see their neighborhood become deserted, with fire trucks and other emergency vehicles racing everywhere. By the time the Gladney family members evacuate their home, they’re in a sheer panic. While driving in the family car to go to the nearest designated shelter, they encounter many obstacles, including a traffic jam.
The rest of “White Noise” shows how the family members bond together and fall apart in certain ways during this disaster. While in the car, Jack notices Babette put something in her mouth and quickly swallow it, so he asks her what she just swallowed. Babette says it was a piece of Life Savers candy, but Jack is doubtful. He begins to wonder if it was a pill of the mysterious drug Dylar.
“White Noise” shows in clever and sometimes oddly amusing ways how the problems that are exposed in the Gladney family are a microcosm of a larger society problem of people being lulled and sometimes programmed into a false sense of security. It comes out in subtle and not-so-subtle symbolism and conversations in the movie. The character of Jack embodies this dichtomy of someone who thinks he’s in total control of his life but finds out that his life can quickly get out of his control, thereby making him question how much control he really has.
For example, when Henrick warns his family that the mysterious smoke could be dangerous pollution, Jack’s condescending comments is that if it turns into a disaster, the “poor and uneducated” will be the ones who will be hurt the most. Jack’s attitude is a satire of a very real mentality that middle-class and upper-class intellectuals have that they are somehow “immune” from catastrophes because they think they’re too smart and will somehow know how to avoid them.
Jack’s ego gets a little confused and flustered when he finds out that Heinrich knows a lot more about this type of science than Jack does. Jack seems proud of Heinrich for this knowledge, but it still makes Jack a little uneasy that Heinrich correctly predicted this disaster when Jack had been so dismissive and wrong about it. And with Heinrich outsmarting Jack when it comes to the science of this disaster, Jack turns toward his marriage to assert some of the dominance that he expects.
All of the cast members are well-suited to their roles, but the movie is really about what happens between Jack and Babette. They don’t have the type of marriage that is headed for divorce, unlike the couple in Baumbach’s 2019 drama “Marriage Story,” for which Driver earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Instead, Jack and Babette go through experiences that will make them reconsider how they are going to handle their marriage after the evacuation is over.
The fear of death and how to prepare for death are overarching themes in “White Noise,” as the pollution disaster makes several people confront their mortality. Early on in the movie, before even knowing that this disaster would happen, Jack tells Babette that he wants to die before her and that her death will be more spectacular than his. Jack says that Babette would be able to cope with being a widowed spouse better than he would be able to cope with being a widowed spouse. It might sound like a backwards compliment to Babette, but it’s really Jack’s way of saying that he doesn’t want to be a lonely widower who dies alone.
“White Noise” is hit or miss when it comes to character development. Cassidy (as Denise), Sam Nivola (as Heinrich), May Nivola (as Steffie) have believable chemistry together as stepsiblings trying to adjust to their blended family situation. (Sam and May Nivola are siblings in real life. Their parents are actors Alessandro Nivola and Emily Mortimer.) By the last third of the movie, the kids are essentially sidelined for some soap opera-ish drama between Jack and Babette.
Jack’s college professor colleagues are undeveloped supporting characters. Viewers won’t find out much about Murray, Elliot and the other co-workers who frequently have lunch with Jack: neurochemist Winnie Richards (played by Jodie-Turner Smith), Alfonse (played by Sam Gold) and Cotsakis (played by George Drakoulias). Barbara Sukowa makes the most out of her cameo as an atheist nun called Sister Hermann Marie. Other characters appear in and out of the story like comedic plot devices, rather than people with fully developed personalities.
The conversations in “White Noise” have a cadence that might remind viewers of a stage play. Baumbach and the cast members have given interviews, including a press conference held after the movie’s New York Film Festival’s “White Noise” press screening, where it’s mentioned that the cast members had one month of rehearsals before filming the movie. Most movie productions do not have that rare rehearsal privilege for cast members.
The ending of “White Noise” might seem a little too conveniently contrived for some people’s tastes. However, the end-credits sequence is a must-see for viewers, because this sequence artfully ties in together many of the movie’s themes, (The end-credits sequence involves dance choreography at an A&P grocery store while the LCD Soundsystem song “New Body Rhumba” plays on the movie soundtrack.) The “white noise” of life can either pacify, agitate or do both, depending on the people and the circumstances. The movie “White Noise” asks people and wants to know: “Are you paying attention to the white noise in the first place?”
Netflix will release “White Noise” in select U.S. cinemas on November 25, 2022. The movie will premiere on Netflix on December 30, 2022.
