Producers: Noah Baumbach, David Heyman and Uri Singer   Director: Noah Baumbach   Screenplay: Noah Baumbach  Cast: Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola, May Nivola, Jodie Turner-Smith, André L. Benjamin, Lars Eidinger, Sam Gold, Carlos Jacott, Francis Jue, Danny Wolohan and Barbara Sukowa  Distributor: Netflix

Grade: B+

Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel has long been considered important—some would say prescient, even visionary—but also deemed unfilmable.  That hasn’t deterred Noah Baumbach who, on the heels of his highly lauded “Marriage Story,” persuaded Netflix to bankroll his crack at it.  The result is a film that, while it naturally edits out some of the book’s episodes (even famous ones) and makes other alterations, adjustments and additions (most notably a bravura dance sequence over the end credits), is actually a remarkably faithful adaptation, down to much of the dialogue.  That’s not entirely to its advantage, since while the book may have been ahead of its time, now it feels a bit behind ours.

Yet Baumbach has made a valiant attempt to wrestle into cinematic form a tome that, while it lacks the literal heft of many classics and is geographically limited, covers an enormous amount of territory: it’s part academic satire, part domestic dramedy, part disaster epic, part mystery and part disquisition on the clash between reality and imagination, taking time to critique consumerism, the pharmaceutical industry, religion and the public’s fascination with catastrophe—all wrapped up in an overarching rumination on the use of all those nattering forms of “white noise” as distractions from a pervasive fear of death.  One might assume that any attempt to adapt such a  book for the screen would be a mess, but like the novel Baumbach’s effort is elegant, precise, carefully constructed and tonally consistent, though deliberately bizarre.  If the result sometimes falls short of its source, the film is still a noble effort to capture the book’s idiosyncratic spirit on film.

The protagonist of the piece, Jack, or J.A.K. to use his publishing name, Gladney (Adam Driver), is an internationally renowned Professor of Hitler Studies at a place called College-on-the-Hill—in fact, he is recognized as the creator of the field. He attracts legions of awestruck students, and his closest faculty colleague, relative newcomer Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle) is so impressed with his accomplishment that he asks for his help to win him administrative support for his plan to emulate him by establishing a similar niche discipline devoted to Elvis Presley.  The result is a humorous class-presentation duet in which they compare Hitler and Elvis in rapid-fire fact-shouting, an academic vaudeville routine that holds everybody, including fellow faculty, spellbound. 

But Gladney knows he’s a bit of a fraud.  Afraid that attendees at an upcoming Hitler conference he’ll be hosting will learn that he doesn’t know German (apart from, a few phrases), he’s taking language lessons on the sly from a sketchy teacher (Danny Wolohan), though without much success.  Otherwise he and other academic colleagues as peculiar as Murray (but presumably tenured) spend much of their time sitting around cafeteria tables blurting out faddish observations that have little connection to each other and are simply left hanging.

At home Jack and his third wife Babette (Greta Gerwig), a physical trainer like him on a third marriage, preside unsteadily over a brood of children: hyper-analytical Heinrich (Sam Nivola) and intuitive daughter Steffie (May Nivola), both his by previous wives, and Babette’s intense daughter Denise (Raffey Cassidy), along with their own young son Wilder (Henry and Dean Moore).  The domestic atmosphere is marked by vigorous overlapping conversations and a habit of gathering together in front of the television for news reports on plane crashes.

It’s interrupted by a near-to-home disaster, the collision of a gasoline truck with a train transporting toxic chemicals that sends a plume of black smoke into the air.  The result is a mandatory evacuation that sends the family on a road trip marked by hallucinatory scenes of carnage, close shaves with calamity, and a stop at a deserted gas station that might have left Jack contaminated, at least according to some very speculative scientific information derived from a computer simulation.

But in the aftermath he finds that it’s Babette who’s really obsessed with a fear of death, so much so that she’s entered into an adulterous relationship with a sinister scientist called Gray (Lars Eidinger) who can provide an experimental drug designed to address such a fixation, though one with weird side effects.  Out of jealousy Jack determines to confront the chemist, which he does in a scene reminiscent of the final meeting of Humbert and Quilty; but it proves a less fatal encounter, leading to a meeting with a nun-nurse (Barbara Sukowa) whose ministrations will hardly fill their spiritual void.  But that closing dance number suggests that a place other than a church serves as a substitute venue for that function in society, at least that of 1984, when “White Noise” is set.

The film is as likely as the book to frustrate and antagonize as it is to enthrall.  While some will smile in agreement at its quirky reflections on American culture, both high and low, others will find its satirical strokes either obvious or baffling.  And for every viewer mesmerized by the stately, affected style adopted by Baumbach, cinematographer Lol Crawley and editor Matthew Hannam, there will be another put off by it.

It’s difficult, however, not to be impressed by their facility in achieving the slightly surrealistic mood they’re aiming for, and by the exquisite contributions of production designer Jess Gonchor and costumer Ann Roth in recreating an exaggerated recreation of mid-eighties suburbia.  Danny Elfman’s playfully deranged score adds to the oddball atmosphere.

No less important is the success of the cast in fitting themselves into the world DeLillo, as filtered through Baumbach, creates.  The language, which somehow sounds peculiar and unerringly right all at once, requires careful delivery, and Driver, Gerwig, Cheadle and all the supporting players, including the youngsters, manage the job skillfully.  Embodying characters that are both slightly cartoonish and utterly earnest is a difficult balancing act to pull off, and the fact that the actors walk the tightrope so effectively is a major contribution to the film’s effect.

The mordant humor and caustic message of “White Noise” will not be to everyone’s taste, but Baumbach and company have at the very least proven that DeDillo’s brilliant 1985 take on American society was not so unfilmable after all. 

Producers: Kristie Macosko Krieger, Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner   Director: Steven Spielberg   Screenplay: Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner   Cast: Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Gabriel LaBelle, Judd Hirsch, Jeannie Berlin, Robin Bartlett, Julia Butters, Keeley Karsten, Sophia Kopera, Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord, Chloe East, Sam Rechner, Oakes Fegley, Birdie Borria, Alina Brace, Isabelle Kusman, Chandler Lovelle, Cooper Dodson, Gustavo Escobar, Nicolas Cantu, Gabriel Bateman, Stephen Smith, Lane Factor, Greg Grunberg, Jan Hoag, James Urbaniak and David Lynch Distributor: Universal Pictures

Grade: B+

Steven Spielberg takes a trip down memory lane in this semi-autobiographical tale of a boy’s coming-of-age—and embracing filmmaking as his great love—in a fracturing family during the fifties and sixties.  “The Fabelmans” is an episodic journey of self-discovery suffused with a nostalgic glow, but also with pangs of pain as well as bouts of joy.

Spielberg’s surrogate, in the script co-written by him and Tony Kushner, is Samuel Fabelman, who, as his surname implies, proves a born storyteller.  His medium, as sequences that bookend the picture show, is film.  In the first as a young boy (played by Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord) in 1952 New Jersey, he’s taken to see his first movie by his parents Burt (Paul Dano) and Mitzi (Michelle Williams).  It’s Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Greatest Show on Earth,” and he’s transfixed by a scene involving a horrendous crash of two trains and a car.  The boy becomes so obsessed that he uses the electric train he receives as a Hanukkah present to restage the wreck, and an 8mm camera given him by his mother to film it.

This quasi-prologue also dramatizes the personality differences between Burt and Mitzi.  When Sammy’s scared about going into the theatre, his father, an engineer who repairs TVs and radios on the side, explains the technology behind film projection; his mother, a pianist, speaks to him in terms of dreams.  One is practical-minded, the other a romantic.

At the film’s end, Sammy (now played by Gabriel LaBelle), a high school graduate who hates college, has finally found a very entry-level position into the film business: a tentative invitation to work as an assistant’s assistant on a new TV series, “Hogan’s Heroes,” from one of the show’s creators, Bernie Fein (Greg Grunberg).  Knowing that the kid longs to be a film director, the kindly Fein arranges for him to spend a few minutes with one of his idols, John Ford (David Lynch).  After the meeting an exuberant Sammy dances onto the Paramount lot as Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski end with a charming visual joke based on the growling Ford’s advice to him.

Between these two sequences, “The Fabelmans” sketches young Sammy’s increasing ambitions as a novice filmmaker after the family moves to Phoenix, where Burt’s expertise in computer engineering has won him a job at GE.  He makes juvenile movies starring his sisters, and moves into short features starring his Boy Scout chums—a western inspired by “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and a war picture called “Escape to Nowhere” (both of which reflect titles actually made by Spielberg).  But though impressed by his son’s facility with the camera, Burt continues to consider his obsession with moviemaking a hobby he shouldn’t allow to interfere with more practical plans for the future.

On the other hand, Sammy’s grouchy grand-uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch), a circus bum and sometime movie actor in town to sit shivah for his late sister, perceives the drive to create art in the boy—something inherited from his mother, who might have been a concert artist—and impresses on him the tension it will cause between him and his family.

That prediction proves prescient when Sammy uses his camera at a camping trip the family takes with Burt’s best friend and co-worker “Uncle” Bennie (Seth Rogen), a jocular fellow who moved with them from Jersey to Phoenix.  In editing the footage for a family entertainment Burt hopes will ease the depression Mitzi is suffering after her mother’s death, Sammy discovers evidence of a secret that could destroy the family’s equilibrium.  And he’s right: it leads to his parents’ divorce, as well as his own decision to abandon filmmaking altogether. 

The hiatus coincides with another move, from Arizona to Northern California, where Burt has taken a position with IBM.  It proves disastrous for the family.  Mitzi grows more and more troubled and eventually leaves for the east.  And the high school experience is brutal for Sammy.  He’s targeted by anti-Semitic jocks Logan (Sam Rechner) and Chad (Oakes Fegley).  At the same time he’s pursued by Monica (Chloe East), a pretty Jesus freak who combines romance with a desire to convert him.  But although she ultimately breaks his heart, she’s responsible for encouraging him to take up the camera again to film the graduating class’ “Ditch Day” at the beach—a project that teaches him how movies can transform people, though sometimes in unexpected ways.

In the aftermath of Sammy’s graduation and failed college efforts, Burt finally accepts the inevitable, leading to the film’s epilogue on the Paramount lot.

One has to wonder about the accuracy of the film as “autobiography,” of course.  But like another superb coming-of-age memoir, James Gray’s “Armageddon Time,” Spielberg’s is filtered through the lens of a grown man’s memory, and reflects the directors’ differing perspectives—Gray’s the immigrant experience in New York City, Spielberg’s that of the American family in suburbia.  But neither man is unwilling to confront the dark side of his youth.  In both cases that includes the reality of anti-Semitism, but in Gray’s it also involves racism—a subject simply absent from Spielberg’s (if a single black face appears in “Fablemans,” it’s for so short a time that it barely registers).

Rather the darkness here is primarily domestic: the collapse of a marriage.  At first Burt and Mitzi seem mismatched, but perfectly so.  It’s only by degrees that their incompatibility grows evident, but still when the break finally comes, it does so with startling suddenness.  Of the two partners, Williams will garner the most attention, and she’s indeed remarkable, capturing the mercurial nature of this flighty, sad, troubled, but sympathetic woman without a false note.  But Dano has the more difficult task, bringing poignancy to the rigid, bespectacled, rationalistic Burt, a man dedicated to his family but also, even primarily, to his work—seeing it not only as the means of supporting the family but as validation of his own ego.  Making him as sympathetic as Mitzi even as he forces the family to follow him from state to state until they reach a place they find intolerable, denigrating Sammy’s dreams in the process, is a herculean task, but Dano pulls it off: there’s a moment late in the film, where the camera simply focuses on his face as he reacts to some photos, that’s an object lesson in masterly acting.  So while Williams has the showier role, Dano’s achievement shouldn’t be undervalued.

As for LaBelle, he makes a likable stand-in for the writer-director—even if at times he comes across as a guy who wouldn’t be out of place in an “American Pie” movie—and manages to convincingly convey Sammy’s anger over his parents’ marital problems and his high-school troubles.  As Bennie Rogen lowers his frat-boy persona to a more human level, and Hirsch, though he appears relatively briefly, proves that his old crowd-pleasing skill remains intact.  Lynch’s stint as Ford will send buffs into something close to ecstasy.

As with all of Spielberg’s work, the sheer fastidiousness of the production is as remarkable as the facility of Spielberg and Kaminski’s choreography.  Rick Carter’s production design and Mark Bridges’ costumes aren’t afraid to italicize the period detail (and the colors), and John Williams contributes a sumptuous orchestral score to support the lush images.  At times Spielberg’s penchant for overstatement leads to obviousness—the Boy Scout movie sequences don’t stint on the kids’ high spirits, and the high school bullying material is far from subtle.  Sammy’s relationship with Monica is equally broad, with East coming perilously close to mere caricature.

But despite the quibbles “The Fabelmans” is one of Spielberg’s most accessible and engaging works.  At two and a half hours it’s long, but as edited by Sarah Broshar and Michael Kahn never feels so, and as it ends you’re exhilarated rather than tired, almost hoping for a second act to take the story through the director’s astonishing cinema career. 

Among the many films in which filmmakers reminisce about their work, this is one of the most approachable.  It’s inevitable that it will encourage you to reach back into Spielberg’s oeuvre and enjoy the movies (and early TV shows) that Sammy—sorry, Steven—would make.