Three years after his hit drama Marriage Story was nominated for six Oscars, Noah Baumbach has returned with another new film for Netflix – this time an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel White Noise.
The black comedy finds the writer/director in rather different territory than he’s used to, with the enigmatic film charting an array of unusual events in the life of Jack Gladney (Adam Driver) a professor of “Hitler studies” at the fictional College-on-the-Hill.
Over the course of the film, we see Jack grapple with an “airborne toxic event,” a mysterious pharmaceutical drug called Dylar, and all sorts of fears about his own mortality, eventually leading to a dramatic and possibly rather puzzling conclusion.
If you’ve watched the film and need a little help unpacking it all, read on to have the White Noise ending explained.
White Noise ending explained
During the Airborne Toxic Event – which occurs halfway through the film – Jack’s life is changed forever when he is inadvertently exposed to a poisonous cloud.
He is told that he is guaranteed to die from the exposure eventually, and although the ‘experts’ are unable to inform him exactly what this means for his life expectancy, the knowledge further heightens his fear of death.
After the event, most things seem to return to normal, but Jack notes that Babette has become increasingly distant, and together with Denise he works out that she has come to rely on a mysterious drug called Dylar.
During his investigations – and after confronting Babette – he discovers that Dylar is a trial drug designed to treat anxieties about death and that Babette has been receiving it in exchange for sleeping with a man known as Mr. Gray.
Jack decides he wants to take revenge on the man and finds a pistol that was previously given to him by his friend and fellow academic Murray Siskind during the evacuation caused by the Airborne Toxic Event.
![""]("https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2022/12/WG2021082004152CR-3994a7b.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413" "\"\"")
He tracks Mr. Gray down at a hotel where they have a confrontation, and Babette soon shows up as well (a departure from the novel). After a number of gunshots leave them wounded, Jack drives them all to a hospital that turns out to be operated by German atheist nuns.
There, Jack and Babette heal and reconcile with each other, before the film ends with them dancing alongside their family in a supermarket which has appeared throughout the film.
So what does it all mean? Well, basically the film is about many things – chiefly including the fear of death and the things we take interest in to distract ourselves from it.
Speaking specifically about the final scene, Baumbach has said: “[It] is a dance of death and a dance of life. It’s a celebration of all that’s ending. Which is a celebration of all that is.”
Meanwhile, as reported by the LA Times, the director further explained: “The book allows for so much interpretation, and I didn’t want to narrow these things.
“We create this sort of dance for ourselves daily to not acknowledge our mortality, and at the same time, we’re putting all these images of death in our entertainment and following horrible stories with a kind of delight because it’s happening somewhere else or it feels unreal to us.
“And the airborne toxic event is essentially bringing all that death and horror to our doorstep.”
The film, then, essentially explores what happens when we are confronted with our own mortality, and the different steps we take to deal with the horror it creates – from seeking solace in family life to relying on drugs to being driven to violent crime to (in the case of the German nuns) keeping alive a tradition of religious belief.
White Noise is now streaming on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £6.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.
The latest issue of Radio Times magazine is on sale now – subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the Radio Times View From My Sofa podcast.