Don DeLillo’s “White Noise” according to Noah Baumbach

Qhen he was a child, Noah Baumbach watched films of his time, Brian De Palma for example. The era of him were the 80s and the director of Dressed to kill then he said. “Alfred Hitchcock has created a new language cinematic and now that language is available to us ».

White Noise by Noah Baumbach, the trailer

In the press conference of White Noisethe opening film of the Venice Film Festival which will be screened tonight, preceded by the awarding of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to Catherine Deneuve, the director famous for his “mumblecores” (film in which there was a lot of talk, a little to make up for the scarcity of budget, a little because naturalism had given the adepts to their heads), Noah Baumbach says he did the same: “In the 80s I fed on cinema genre films, films about families on vacation, films about natural disasters. All of this ended up in White Noise“.

Mediation is by Don DeLillo and the 1985 novel in which satire of the academic world, satire of family life, paranoia and apocalypse are added (in Italy White noise is published by Einaudi).

Greta Gerwig, May Nivola, Adam Driver, Samuel Nivola and Raffey Cassidy. Cr: Wilson Webb / NETFLIX © 2022

White Noise according to Baumbach

“Don DeLillo told of a college that doesn’t exist in a town that doesn’t exist,” Baumbach explained. “But I knew I would find it somewhere.” He found it in Ohio, where “unlike New York, no one had ever seen a movie set and it was easy and great to get the whole community involved in filming.”

White Noise which, as per tradition, the tour of the festivals that promise to ferry the film to the Oscars begins in Venice, has as protagonist Adam Driver in the role of a professor of Hitler studies who does not speak German and Greta Gerwig, companion of the director, in the role of his wife. Both in their fourth marriage and with a host of children (two of which are children of Alessandro Nivola, also in the cast), they are both terrified of death and loneliness. They feel safe within the crowded walls of their home, but when they are forced to leave because a catastrophic accident causes a toxic gas to escape from a train car and the entire community is evacuated, the fragile balance based on rituals and lies goes into shatters.

The language and colors of White Noise

“Don DeLillo’s language is familiar to me,” said Noah Baumbach. “The re-reading of the book coincided with the pandemic. It seemed to me a relevant story compared to what was happening around us, but it would have been relevant anyway. In that language I found my voice ».
«An exciting and intellectual language at the same time» echoes Gerwig, who reread the novel with his partner. “When we started rehearsing for the film, the ideas materialized in the characters.”

Characters who needed major interventions: a very cotton wig for Gerwig, impossible shirts for Adam Driver and a false belly (“Which later, once I gained weight, I no longer needed,” the actor admits). “What effect did it have on you to see yourself so out of shape, did you imagine what you will be like in 15 years?” asked the Australian colleague to the actor who, legendarily, does not see himself in his films, on the contrary literally escapes from the official screenings. “I’m very happy with how things are going,” he replied.

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