The American filmmaker returns to the genesis of “White Noise”, adapted from a novel by Don Delillo and produced by Netflix, projected at the opening of the Venice Mostra.
Interview by
Fine flower of New York independence, Noah Baumbach, 52, built in thirteen feature films a literate and sensitive work as a Hollywood counter-model, with rather turned references to Europe and literature . His latest film, White Noise, a Netflix production, was presented, on August 31, at the opening of the Venice Mostra.
from where you came to adapt the novel “noise de background “of don de de de delicill?
I read it between the end of high school and the university, some of his images and even of his sentences have remained engraved in me. At the beginning of 2020, I started to read it again, just like that, without ulterior motives. And, on this, the pandemic arrived. Gambergant like everyone else in my apartment, I was struck by the relevance of the text, having regard to what we lived: everything was already there.
The book brews indeed many subjects: the Ecological disaster, hypochondria, fear of death … why have they located in the 1980s rather than today?
All the subjects you mention appear in the book, even if everything takes place at a time when the Internet and smartphones did not yet exist. Everything that was true at the time has only been increasing since. And, for my part, I preferred to turn in a supermarket than filming someone shopping on their computer.
What was the difficulty of adaptation?
It was to install continuity, because the novel is mainly built by cycles. It was necessary to draw a line in this abundant material. Of course, it is a film on the family, marriage, the profession of teacher, etc. But it was above all a question of representing the routine and the strategies that we invent to distract our condition of mortals.
The film continues to tear the intimate at the big show. Where does this concern for a permanent change comes from?
I thought a lot about the metaphor for “background noise”. If you consider a family as a whole, it can give something chaotic or inconsistent, or produce a crazy hubbub. If you decompose everything into individual elements, the voices become recognizable again, they have their own sense. The whole film is built like this: in a permanent movement that goes from the whole to the particular. Like an overall plan that would finish in close -up.
“White Noise” often overwhelms the spectator by his machine gun dialogues quickly debited, constantly intersecting. We have the impression of a real millimeter partition…
You have 46.56% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.