Four feature films marked with the Netflix seal are competing in Venice this year. And in this overwhelming presence of the streaming giant at the event – closely related to the veto the Cannes Festival has imposed over the years due to both industrial logic and arrogant stubbornness – you can see a somewhat conservative strategy. From Mostra’s programmers, or in other words, their willingness to take the easy way out. But the truth is, ‘Background Noise’, the Netflix movie directed by Noah Baumbach and starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, is not easy. To prove it, all you have to do is look at the literary model that inspired him: the novel of the same name that marked Don DeLillo’s blessing and The oft-quoted “Great American Writer” was slacking off with relentless ferocity over the pathetic state of modern America..
In fact, considering all the futile efforts to bring a book to the screen in the last two decades, the very existence of the film is enough to respect and admire it. equally respected and feared for its depth and breadthMany people have hitherto considered unsuitable for cinema, both because of DeLillo’s very personal prose—wrapped with interior monologues and postmodern abstractions—and the philosophical burden his characters and story carry. In this sense, it is worth remembering Baumbach’s difficulties during filming—the consecutive deaths of three members of the film crew due to illness, overdose, and suicide, respectively, with a budget of up to $140 million. this has caused some to fear that the project is doomed to fail.
multiple species
Playing a Hitler college professor whose life and the life of his large suburban family are pushed to the brink of collapse when an accident causes a toxic release into the atmosphere. ‘Background noise’ works simultaneously with satire, ‘thriller’, horror story, apocalyptic dystopia, family ‘sitcom’ and metaphysical review. And as it shifts these genres, it portrays a society in which its members are distracted and subjugated by the products offered in the supermarkets, the media saturation, the drugs they are addicted to, and generally all that makes up the illusion. of the American dream; a world of traffic noise and gossip of people who talk and talk mainly to generate misinformation and listen to the voice of their own voice, while trying to forget their crippling fears of death.
a little radical
His attitude towards the model of the new film only transcends respect to place himself near respect. Just as David Cronenberg did in adapting DeLillo’s other outstanding fiction, ‘Cosmopolis’, for the big screen, Baumbach reproduces much of the novel’s dialogue practically intact, for its certainty is that any change will do harm, and because of the avalanche of aphorisms. what the author puts into his characters’ mouths is an important tool for the constant tonal changes of the story. Thanks in large part to this fidelity, ‘Background noise’ manages to be absurd, tragic, cartoonish, disturbing and funny, and usually manages to move from one direction to the other in just a few seconds.
And yet to see it It is inevitable to feel that Baumbach is not the most suitable director to adapt such a literary work, although in her previous filmography she has demonstrated her unique talent for portraying neurotic, hyper-articulated and narcissistic men; To do justice to DeLillo’s unorthodox narrative method in which the influence of some of Jean-Luc Godard’s films of the late 1960s can be detected – the author is a voracious cinephile – A director more inclined to formal radicalism would be needed.. On the other hand, could a more radical version of this movie benefit from the substantial financial backing that Netflix provides?