Meewella | Critic

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Tag: Noah Baumbach

QuickView: White Noise (2022)

“Family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation.”

Jack

“White noise”, both figuratively and literally, may be an apt description of Noah Baumbach’s dialogue style, a skill he has deployed with varying effectiveness over the course of his filmography. White Noise, adapted from Don DeLillo’s breakout novel, seeks to explore the anxieties at play in a typical 1980s American middle class family, a pervasive existential dread and specifically fear of death. As someone with an apparently atypical relationship with my own mortality, I am perhaps not best placed to opine on Baumbach’s presentation but these were frustrating characters to observe navigating their issues. This is through no fault of the actors — Adam Driver is an ever-reliable lead, as a professor who is more a performer than an educator, and Greta Gerwig is similarly effective as his wife, though her character becomes increasingly absent over the course of the film. Divided into a series of discrete but thematically connected events, the most resonant was a train derailment that spews a toxic cloud into the air — whilst the children worried, Jack displayed a complacency that they would be unaffected by the disaster, shielded by their privilege — and there seems to be an underlying suggestion that American society is particularly ill-equipped to deal with events outside their control. This broader social satire is White Noise at its best, like a man who demands attention because he is scared, as if his fear would be validated if deemed newsworthy. The detailed period recreation is impressive, and at times astonishing like a meticulously stocked supermarket filled with old branding. Production, costuming and acting are each impressive in isolation but White Noise feels considerably less than the sum of its parts, its increasingly absurdist tone distancing the audience from the subject matter.

5/10

QuickView: Kicking and Screaming (1995)

“Can we have one spontaneous conversation where my dialogue doesn’t end up in your next story?”

Grover

Noah Baumbach’s ear for overlapping dialogue is already evident in his debut film, though Kicking and Screaming’s graduate pseudo-intellectual malaise is derivative of a host of films about stalled adolescence. Its loose approach is at times reminiscent of Richard Linklater’s early work like Slacker and Dazed and Confused, but there is less experimentation in the film-making. Dialogue is plainly the primary strength, Baumbach allowing his characters to work through their issues out loud whilst he also acknowledges their artifice, typically when one is abruptly undercut by another who sees through their façade. Though witty, these are not eruditely word perfect characters, nor is that necessary with familiarity (“You know what I mean. We all know what we mean.” referring to both the friendship group and the audience). Kicking and Screaming is fittingly aimless for graduates waiting for life to begin, only Eric Stoltz’s perennial student understanding that it already has. Baumbach’s exploration of these ideas may be covering well-trodden ground but it does so in a sufficiently engaging way.

6/10

QuickView: Marriage Story (2019)

Marriage Story poster

“Getting divorced with a kid is one of the hardest things to do. It’s like a death without a body.”

Bert Spitz

In The Meyerowitz Stories, I praised Noah Baumbach’s ear for conversational dialogue, which he deploys here to greater effect in a script that prizes raw emotion above the indie intellectualism of his recent output. This is a nuanced, even-handed exploration of the personal toll of fractious divorce, worsened by legal tactical considerations (I cannot think of a starker reminder of why I considered family law for only a moment), strongly reminiscent of Kramer v Kramer. Similarly, the film rests upon two powerhouse central performance, both Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson delivering award-worthy turns. They allow us to sympathise with privileged characters whose circumstances are far from universal even if their personal problems are more familiar. Of note is an intense single-take argument at the centre of the film, in which we see two people who know exactly how to hurt one another even when they have no intention of doing so. It feels slightly more scripted than the sublimely natural extended argument in Before Midnight, but it highlights perfectly the tragedy and loss of control inherent in the expiry of any loving relationship.

9/10

QuickView: The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)

“It was like walking barefoot through broken glass to get a milkshake. I loved the milkshake, but, you know, my feet were bleeding.”

Danny

Writer/director Noah Baumbach has an exceptional ear for conversational dialogue, the way it actually occurs rather than witty repartee stylised for the screen. The fractious relationships of the Meyerowitz family are evident in the way they talk at cross-purposes — sometimes engaged in entirely different conversations — or respond to what they want to hear rather than what was actually said. As fascinating as this is, the characters lack real depth despite the high-profile cast, and the film drifts weightlessly through its disjointed scenes with little to say.

6/10

"A film is a petrified fountain of thought."

(CC) BY-NC 2003-2023 Priyan Meewella

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