I’m convinced that writer/director Noah Baumbach has always been an absurdist. Most of his films are what I would call “absurd realism.” The settings, characters, and situations are all set in reality, but people don’t really speak and act the way that Baumbach’s characters do (e.g., the dysfunctional Brooklyn family of The Squid and the Whale, the erudite slacker of Frances Ha, the all-too-worldly college students of Mistress America). After his least absurd film to date, 2019’s Marriage Story, Baumbach went for all-out absurdism by adapting Dom DeLillo’s postmodern fable “White Noise.” And it turns out that, the more absurd Baumbach gets, the more I am there for it.

Continue reading “The Top 10 Films of 2022 – #9 – “White Noise”” →