fFilm festivals need an audience, which has not made events like this easy in recent years. In 2021, Venice tried to educate the masses about social distancing and the cinema seats were limited, but this year everything is back to normal: social distancing, wearing masks and test stations are only optional facilities for the cautious.
The gray wall, several meters high, which was supposed to keep fans and the curious from besieging the festival palace last year, has been lowered to hip height, which is friendly to the audience. And the area at the Lido looks polished and prettied up, after all, “the oldest film festival in the world” is celebrating the 90th year since it was founded. Since there were a few interruptions after the premiere in 1932 under the Italian fascists and because of the Second World War, this Wednesday the 79th edition has started numerically.
The opening film “White Noise” fits the commemorative mood, because it also looks back into the past, even making explicit comparisons between the enthusiasm for Hitler and the mass hysteria of modern social phenomena. The New York director Noah Baumbach filmed Don DeLillo’s novel of the same name, which takes place in a sleepy American town in the early 1980s. Adam Driver, with the affluent belly and forehead wrinkles of a middle-class man in his mid-forties, is a university professor who cultivates Hitler and National Socialism as an independent subject. His wife Babette (Greta Gerwig) teaches movement therapy and otherwise takes care of the blended family, which consists of so many children that she sometimes forgets their names in the supermarket.
However, one of her daughters doesn’t just suspect that it’s just clumsy, but the side effect of a drug that the mother has been secretly putting in her mouth for weeks. The father initially ignores this behavior, just as he would like to suppress all threats to his peaceful small-town life. Even when an environmental catastrophe is brewing not far from the house, which covers the sky ever larger and darker, he denies reality until he can only flee head over heels.
DeLillo’s trenchant dialogues remain untouched
DeLillo’s novel is strongly tied to this disaster denier, telling the events from his perspective, which could be difficult for less experienced film narrators to translate into the other medium. But Baumbach makes this hurdle a strength of his screenplay, maintaining the perspective, like a plastic surgeon with a scalpel, cutting out only those scenes that are hardly noticeable in the end, and thus condensing the narrative into a story about the influence of misinformation on the masses and the cult of leaders.
In addition, Baumbach is smart enough not to change DeLillo’s trenchant dialogues. Only very good actors are then needed to implement the words in all their beauty, with speed and above all with a sense of humor in such a way that the comedy of the situation is revealed to the viewer. Driver was already able to prove in Baumbach’s marriage drama “Marriage Story”, which was shown here in Venice in 2019, that he has the talent to switch seamlessly from the comic to the dramatic. In a marriage confession scene with Greta Gerwig, he connects to the dramatic heights of “Marriage Story”, letting the facade of the egocentric husband melt into tears.
When he then secretly takes German lessons for a Hitler conference and is tormented by his teacher with words like “potato salad”, the American puts such emphasis on the angular syllables that not only a German-speaking audience has to laugh. This reaches its climax with accent beads such as the sentence “Hitler had many different dogs”, which Driver desperately tries to recite in German. It is advisable to watch this film in the original, otherwise the dubbing will probably swallow up the pronunciation joke.
Consumption in rich colors
With “White Noise” a Netflix film opens Venice for the first time. The decision once again underlines the film policy of the festival management. In contrast to Cannes, Venice embraces the prestige productions of the streaming companies. In 2018, the Netflix film “Roma” by Alfonso Cuarón won the Golden Lion. The major streaming services are therefore welcome guests at the Lido. This year, Netflix is directing the competition, in addition to the opening film, the drama “Bardo” by Oscar winner Alejandro Iñárritu as well as the literary adaptation “Blonde” by Andrew Dominik and the sibling drama “Athena” by the French Romain Gavras at.
And since films are shown at film festivals for the cinema, Baumbach skilfully undermines the streaming aesthetics, knits his credits in such a way that they cannot simply be spooled away, as is usual with Netflix. Only when the names of the filmmakers run across the screen does a choreography unfold once again, which gets to the heart of the film’s content. She supplements a scene in which shortly beforehand, Barbara Sukowa, who was born in Bremen (next to Lars Eidinger as the pill-eating scientist, is another German actress in this film) held a monologue about faith and hope as a nun and throws the sentence at the Americans in German: “You will lose your believers.”
Religion in that world has long since had nothing to do with the churches. Baumbach shows consumption in rich colors, shopping becomes a substitute religion, and catastrophes, environmental crises, misinformation are forgotten about the promise of salvation of the products. All of this is already in DeLillo’s novel from 1985, “White Noise” shows these topics more topical than ever. It is hoped that this festival will continue to be just as strong.
