In case you've become a little too comfortable with these turbulent times, you may want to prepare yourself for an airborne toxic event by way of Noah Baumbach's new film White Noise. The news broke today that Baumbach's follow-up to his 2019 film Marriage Story will be the opening film for the Venice Film Festival, premiering on August 31. Along with this news, the film's Twitter account released a new first-look image from the film, showing us Adam Driver in the lead role as professor Jack Gladney.
White Noise is an adaptation of Don DeLillo's 1985 novel of the same name. The novel won the National Book Award for Fiction, and is often considered DeLillo's breakout work, launching him into a highly prolific career as a writer. The novel, like the film, tells the story of a Hitler Studies professor, Jack Gladney, and his family as they make their way through large and small-scale disasters, such as an airborne toxic event.
The first image, released today, shows Driver as the clumsy, middle-American Gladney standing in the center of the frame looking, honestly, exactly like you would picture any DeLillo character, and looking reminiscent of a Charles Burns illustration, open-mouthed and awkward. Flanking him is his wife Babette, played by Greta Gerwig, and their four children. Though the context of the image is still unknown, the wash of green over the frame certainly lends itself to the context of an impending chemical disaster.
Starring alongside Driver and Gerwig are Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola, May Nivola, Jodie Turner-Smith, André L. Benjamin, and Lars Edinger. Of the premiere news, director Noah Baumbach said, "It is a truly wonderful thing to return to the Venice Film Festival, and an incredible honor to have White Noise play as the opening night film. This is a place that loves cinema so much, and it’s a thrill and a privilege to join the amazing films and filmmakers that have premiered here."
Venice Film Festival Chief Alberto Barbera sung the film's praises in the following statement, “[a]dapted from the great Don DeLillo novel, Baumbach has made an original, ambitious and compelling piece of art which plays with measure on multiple registers: dramatic, ironic, satirical.” He continued, "[t]he result is a film that examines our obsessions, doubts, and fears as captured in the 1980’s, yet with very clear references to contemporary reality.”
White Noise will open the 79th Venice Film Festival on August 31. The film will be then distributed by Netflix.