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      ‘Barbie’ Fans Show Up in Style

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      Fans nationwide shopped their closets for the rosiest interpretations of the Barbie ethos: sparkly bags, open-toed pumps, stretchy headbands and more.Karma Masselli woke up Thursday morning knowing it was a special day. The “Barbie” movie was finally here.Masselli, 26, and her group of about 25 friends began the festivities by rummaging through their closets for sheer pants and polyester shirts and pink Crocs to assemble their outfits, each representing a different doll: Cowgirl Barbie, Sporty Barbie, Vintage Barbie, Malibu Barbie, Mermaid Barbie and more.Next was “Barbie brunch” at a friend’s apartment in Brooklyn, featuring an array of pink foods, including pink deviled eggs, pop tarts, pasta salad with beets and pink salsa.“It felt like it was the Super Bowl at our ‘Barbie brunch,’” Masselli said. “It felt like we were getting together and having a holiday about girliness.”By afternoon, the group arrived in Manhattan, at the AMC in Kips Bay, to watch the long-awaited film. The screening was delayed for 25 minutes, but once the film started the packed theater erupted in applause. People clapped and cheered and guffawed as the Warner Bros. logo — in pink — appeared onscreen and when Barbie was introduced.“It was amazing,” Masselli said, emerging from the theater. “I cried.”Accessorizing, à la Barbie.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesRocking the orange midriff look with a little pink purse.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesStephen Solomon, Ezra Weingartner, Katy O’Connell, and Xandra Abney show off Barbie-inspired outfits outside the AMC Lincoln Square theater in Manhattan on July 20.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesMasselli, who wore a hot pink tank top with sparkling pink pants, was one of many New Yorkers who turned out for the opening weekend of “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster film starring Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken.Starting Thursday afternoon, at theaters across the country and even overseas, seats were sold out to crowds brimming with color — one color in particular. Some clutched their favorite dolls, while others greeted friends with, “Hi, Barbie,” grinning.Many fans also chose to see a double feature by watching both “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the making of the atomic bomb. The unlikely pairing of these two smashingly successful films resulted in the movie event of the summer and the biggest box office weekend since 2019.“You could just feel the excitement, the energy and the joy in the theater,” said Stephen Solomon, 24, who saw “Barbie” at the AMC Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side. “It felt like an event.”Mary Albus, 28, entered the AMC Kips Bay theater holding a vintage Barbie doll, which she got on her 21st birthday. Albus shares the doll with her group of friends — the “sisterhood of the Traveling Barbie” — passing it around from friend to friend. Vintage Barbie was at one friend’s wedding in North Carolina; she has also been to Chicago, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.Mary Albus, 28, carries a Barbie doll outside the AMC Kips Bay theater.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesIt just happened that the “Barbie” movie premiered during Albus’s turn with the doll.“They were like, ‘You have to take her to the Barbie movie,’” Albus said.May Haaf said seeing the movie with her 9-year-old daughter, Arya, was a bonding event and a way to celebrate female empowerment. Both wore matching white and pink “Barbie” T-shirts.“It’s like a new generation of movies where women can be individuals and not be married, and you don’t have to settle for anything,” Haaf said.Other fans who watched the movie also related to the film’s themes of female empowerment.Zoila Morillo, with a President Barbie sash, outside AMC Kips Bay theater.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesMay Haaf saw the movie with her 9-year-old daughter.Maansi Srivastava/The New York Times“You could just feel the excitement, the energy and the joy in the theater,” one fan said. “It felt like an event.”Maansi Srivastava/The New York Times“The movie especially was a really great commentary on the difficulties of being a woman but also how beautiful it is at the same time and the dichotomy that exists in womanhood,” said Sadie Veach, 23, who was wearing a pink pantsuit and pink eyeliner. Veach’s friend, Taylee Mathis, 25, was wearing a pink shirt and pants and carrying a skateboard. She said she grew up loving Barbie dolls, watching the Barbie animated movies and dressing like Barbie.“She’s more than just pink,” Mathis said. “With Barbie you can be anybody you want to be.”Maansi Srivastava contributed reporting. More

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      Barbie: Reviews of Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling

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      Some critics viewed the highly-anticipated movie as satirically capitalistic, while others saw it as capitalistically satirical.As reviews for “Barbie” rolled out ahead of its weekend opening, a critical divide emerged.Some thought that Greta Gerwig, the acclaimed director of “Lady Bird” and “Little Women,” had met the expectations for a more subversive take on the 11.5-inch Mattel phenomenon. They thought Gerwig’s script, which she collaborated on with her partner, Noah Baumbach, succeeded in acknowledging the criticisms that the Barbie brand has received over the years — including unrealistic representations of women’s bodies and, up until recent years, a lack of diversity in its collection — while presenting a comedy that leans into the delightful weirdness of the Barbie universe. Others felt that the director did not go far enough in dinging her corporate sponsors, keeping the critiques of consumerism and female beauty standards at surface level.Critics tended to be unified in their praise of the movie’s stars, however, celebrating Margot Robbie’s surprising emotional depth as the so-called stereotypical Barbie who embarks on an eye-opening journey outside of the meticulously manufactured dolls’ world, as well as Ryan Gosling’s deadpan comedy as a Ken who delights in his discovery of the patriarchy.Read on for some highlights.‘Barbie’ May Be the Most Subversive Blockbuster of the 21st Century [Rolling Stone]The movie does more than avoid delivering a two-hour commercial for Mattel, David Fear writes, suggesting that the movie could be “the most subversive blockbuster of the 21st century to date.”“This is a saga of self-realization, filtered through both the spirit of free play and the sense that it’s not all fun and games in the real world — a doll’s story that continually drifts into the territory of ‘A Doll’s House,’” Fear writes. “This is a movie that wants to have its Dreamhouse and burn it down to the ground, too.”We Shouldn’t Have to Grade Barbie on a Curve [Vulture]In one of the most critical reviews of the movie’s approach to gender politics, Alison Willmore writes that “it’s not a rebuke of corporatized feminism so much as an update,” noting “a streak of defensiveness to ‘Barbie,’ as though it’s trying to anticipate and acknowledge any critiques lodged against it before they’re made.”“To be a film fan these days is to be aware that franchises and cinematic universes and remakes and other adaptations of old IP have become black holes that swallow artists, leaving you to desperately hope they might emerge with the rare project that, even though it comes from constrictive confines, still feels like it was made by a person,” she writes. “‘Barbie’ definitely was. But the trouble with trying to sneak subversive ideas into a project so inherently compromised is that, rather than get away with something, you might just create a new way for a brand to sell itself.”There are limits to how much dimension even Greta Gerwig can give this branded material [New York Times]Manohla Dargis, the chief film critic for The Times, offers high praise to Gerwig as a director, writing that her “directorial command is so fluent she seems born to filmmaking,” but she asserts that the movie largely dodged the “thorny contradictions and the criticisms that cling to the doll.”“While Gerwig does slip in a few glints of critique — as when a teenage girl accuses Barbie of promoting consumerism, shortly before she pals up with our heroine — these feel more like mere winks at the adults in the audience than anything else,” Dargis writes.A doll’s life is richly, unexpectedly imagined by Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie [The Chicago Tribune]“Any $145 million studio movie based on a doll, accessories sold separately, no doubt comes with a few restrictions,” Michael Phillips writes. “And yet this one actually feels spontaneous, and fun.” Giving the film 3.5 starts out of 4, he contends that Mattel “could have played things far more safely” and that “a lot of the biggest laughs in ‘Barbie’ come at Mattel’s expense.”Ryan Gosling is plastic fantastic in ragged doll comedy [The Guardian]Peter Bradshaw was among the critics who felt that Gosling steals the show with Barbie herself reduced to the “bland comic foil.” He was in the more cynical camp of reviewers when it came to the film’s self-awareness, calling the film “entertaining and amiable, but with a softcore pulling of punches: lightly ironised, celebratory nostalgia for a toy that still exists right now.”Welcome to Greta Gerwig’s fiercely funny, feminist Dreamhouse [Entertainment Weekly]Describing the movie as “packed with winking one-liners,” Devan Coggan acknowledges the praise of Gosling but contends that Robbie “remains the real star.”“Physically, the blonde Australian actress already looks like she stepped out of a Mattel box (something the film itself plays on during one particular gag), but she gives an impressively transformative performance,” she writes, “moving her arms and joints like they’re actually made of plastic. Robbie has brought a manic physicality to previous films including ‘Babylon’ and ‘Birds of Prey,’ but she now embraces physical comedy to the max.”Greta Gerwig’s World of Plastic Is Fantastic [Collider]Ross Bonaime writes that “Barbie” could have been “little more than a toy ad,” but it instead became an “existential look at the difficulties of being a woman, the terrifying nature of life in general, the understanding that trying to be perfect is absurd, while also encapsulating everything that Barbie has meant to people — both good and bad.”Calling Gerwig’s work behind the camera “vibrant and bold,” Bonaime also praises the narrative work of the popstar-packed soundtrack, which includes songs from Lizzo, Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice.Margot Robbie doll-ivers [Los Angeles Times]Describing the film as a “conceptually playful, sartorially dazzling comic fantasy,” Justin Chang suggests that “Barbie” succeeds in making the arguments both for Barbie haters and Barbie lovers.“Gerwig has conceived ‘Barbie’ as a bubble-gum emulsion of silliness and sophistication, a picture that both promotes and deconstructs its own brand,” he writes. “It doesn’t just mean to renew the endless ‘Barbie: good or bad?’ debate. It wants to enact that debate, to vigorously argue both positions for the better part of two fast-moving, furiously multitasking hours.” More

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      Can’t Decide Whether to See ‘Barbie,’ ‘Oppenheimer’ or Both? Our Barbenheimer Quiz Can Help.

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      Barbenheimer is upon us, and moviegoers must decide between two chisel-cheeked midcentury marvels: “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s three-hour biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atomic bomb,” or “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig’s Day-Glo feminist-magical realist take on Mattel IP. While box office trackers say “Barbie” is likely to far outpace Oppie, at least 40,000 fans have already bought tickets for both. Should you opt for a head-snap of a double feature? Or see just one – and which one, at that? Answer these five questions to find out if you’re a Barbie girl, an Oppie nerd or a bona fide Barbenheimie.3 of 5Warner Bros. PicturesIs there an opposite-gender character who serves as a lesson on sexism? Oh boy, is there! In “Oppenheimer,” it’s one female scientist, played by Olivia Thirlby. In “Barbie,” it is, of course, just Ken. (A lot of Kens, who belatedly learn about the patriarchy.) More

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      Greta Gerwig’s ‘Barbie’ Dream Job

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      The moment Greta Gerwig knew for certain that she could make a movie about Barbie, the most famous and controversial doll in history, she was thinking about death. She had been reading about Ruth Handler, the brash Jewish businesswoman who created the doll — and who, decades later, had two mastectomies. Handler birthed this toy with its infamous breasts, the figurine who became an enduring avatar of plastic perfection, while being stuck, like all of us, in a fragile and failing human body. This thought sparked something for Gerwig. She envisioned a sunny-minded Barbie stumbling upon a dying woman in her barbecue area. Then Gerwig kept going. It was the beginning of the pandemic. Maybe no one would ever go to the movies again. Maybe no one would ever see what she was working on. Why not go for broke? Listen to This ArticleFor more audio journalism and storytelling, More

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      How ‘Barbie’ and Blackpink Entered South China Sea Map Spat

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      Vietnam banned the film over its apparent use of a Chinese map showing disputed territory. Blackpink concerts may be next. Here’s what the fuss is about.Of all the things that could inflame tensions in a region that could someday be a theater of war between superpowers, the movie “Barbie” was not an obvious catalyst. Yet here we are.The authorities in Vietnam this week banned the upcoming Greta Gerwig film over a map in “Barbie” that they said shows a Chinese map of territory in the South China Sea, where the two neighbors have competing claims.The Philippines, another Southeast Asian country that disputes China’s territorial claims in the sea, is now deciding whether to ban the star-studded film as well. And Vietnam said on Thursday that it was investigating a South China Sea map on the website of a company promoting Blackpink, a K-pop band scheduled to perform in Hanoi this month.Taking such stands against seemingly innocuous cultural exports may look to some like an overreaction. But Vietnam’s responses make more sense if they are viewed within historical and political contexts. Here’s a primer.What is Vietnam’s beef with ‘Barbie’?The head of the Vietnam Cinema Department, an agency in the one-party state, said on Monday that the Warner Bros. film would not be released domestically because of a scene that includes the so-called nine-dash line — a map that appears on official Chinese documents and encircles most of the South China Sea.The official, Vi Kien Thanh, did not say which scene Vietnam hadn’t liked. Several commentators wondered if he meant the one showing Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, standing in front of a crudely drawn world map. Some also noted that the nine-dash line in that scene appears to lie very far from Asia.A scene in “Barbie” with a map depicting contested territory in the South China Sea. The image may have prompted the Vietnamese government to ban the upcoming film.Warner Bros. PicturesIf that is, indeed, the offending map, “I really can’t see what the fuss is about,” said Bill Hayton, the author of books on Vietnam and the South China Sea.“The map in the film appears to bear no relation to a real map of the world,” Mr. Hayton added. “This looks like Vietnam’s censors trying to demonstrate their patriotism and usefulness to the regime.”Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did Warner Bros. The American movie studio told the Reuters news agency on Thursday that the “Barbie” map of the South China Sea was a “childlike” drawing with no intended significance.Why is the South China Sea important to Vietnam?Vietnam and China are neighbors with an extraordinarily complex relationship. On one hand, both are ruled by a Communist Party, making them ideological allies. They’re also busy trading partners that share an 800-mile border.Yet China occupied Vietnam for a millennium and invaded it as recently as 1979. And under Xi Jinping, China’s powerful leader, Beijing has built military outposts on contested islands in the South China Sea. It also rejected an international tribunal’s landmark 2016 ruling that sided with the Philippines by saying that China’s expansive claim to sovereignty over the sea had no legal basis. More

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      Vietnam Bans ‘Barbie’ Movie Over South China Sea Map

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      Greta Gerwig’s upcoming film has been banned in the country for its use of a map depicting territory that both China and Vietnam claim as their own.There will be no “Barbie” world in Vietnam this summer.The Southeast Asian nation has banned the release of “Barbie,” the upcoming film directed by Greta Gerwig, because of a scene that includes the so-called nine-dash line, a U-shaped dotted line on a map showing territory in the South China Sea that both China and Vietnam claim as their own.The nine-dash line is used in Chinese maps to mark its claim over as much as 90 percent of the South China Sea.While an international tribunal at The Hague ruled in 2016 that China had no legal basis for its claims, Beijing has yet to concede to the ruling and has instead sought to dominate the waters, carrying out aggressive incursions and developing military installations.Vietnam, with its long-held acrimonious ties to China, said on Monday that the new film would not be released in the country because of its use of the line, according to Vi Kien Thanh, the head of the Vietnam Cinema Department. The decision was made by the National Film Appraisal and Classification Board, which is responsible for licensing and censoring foreign movies in Vietnam.Responding to state media on Monday, Mr. Thanh confirmed that “Barbie” was banned because of “the illegal image of the ‘cow’s tongue line’ in the film,” using the common Vietnamese phrase for the nine-dash line.Vietnam Plus, a state newspaper, wrote that the decision to include the line “distorts the truth, violates the law in general and violates sovereignty of Vietnamese territory in particular.”China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei all have territorial claims in the South China Sea, which include islands and other strategic maritime features.“Barbie,” which stars Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and a host of other celebrities, was scheduled to be released in Vietnam on July 21. Some moviegoers in the country welcomed the government’s ban. Hoang Xuan Bach, a 23-year-old university student, said the producers should have known better than to include the map.“I hope this movie will flop,” he said.This is not the first time Vietnam has banned films for including scenes with the nine-dash line. “Uncharted,” a 2022 action film by Sony featuring the actor Tom Holland, and DreamWorks’ 2019 animation “Abominable,” were both dropped from the nation’s box offices for the same reason.Vo Kieu Bao Uyen More

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      ‘Barbenheimer’: Fans Plan to See ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ Back to Back on July 21

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      The “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” movies look very different. But some fans are planning a double feature for their release on July 21.Barbie is everything. He’s just … Robert Oppenheimer.That’s right. The main character competing with Barbie for attention right now isn’t Ken, her plastic significant other. It’s the man who designed the atomic bomb.Fans have been waiting for this summer’s release of two movies — “Barbie,” from Warner Bros. and directed by Greta Gerwig, and “Oppenheimer,” from Universal Pictures and directed by Christopher Nolan — which are both coming out on July 21, and they have been poking fun at the stark contrast in the movies’ themes, moods and color schemes.The result of the release schedule is a mash-up many people may not have seen coming: Barbenheimer. Or Boppenheimer, if you will.Only one month left. pic.twitter.com/n6PKQBtTcc— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) June 20, 2023
      “Oppenheimer” is Nolan’s prestige movie based on “American Prometheus,” a biography of Oppenheimer, the scientist who led the Manhattan Project, which during World War II produced the first atomic bombs. The trailers for that film, with intense music and suspenseful scenes starring a pensive-looking Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer, are in stark contrast with the pink and sparkly trailers for “Barbie,” which show Margot Robbie as the doll living in Barbieland before setting off on an adventure into the real world.The two characters could hardly be more different (does this Venn diagram even have a middle?). And yet, Robbie and Murphy are appearing on T-shirts and sweaters together.Memes, videos and online chatter have flooded social media, and some people are making plans to see the two movies on the same day. A debate about which order to see them in — “Barbie” first to start the day off light, or “Oppenheimer” first, to end on a more cheerful note — hasn’t been settled.The curious crossover is also giving rise to real-life merchandise. A Google search for “Barbenheimer T-shirt” brings tens of thousands of results, and sellers on Etsy have designed their own versions. Some feature Robbie and Murphy, while others combine Barbie’s pink font with a pink drawing of an atomic cloud.One such T-shirt, and an early entry in the crowded field, is a simple split-screen combination of the two movie logos, spelling out “Barbenheimer” with the release date of the films.Hunter Hudson, 23, a filmmaker in San Antonio, said he originally designed and created the shirts for him and his friends to “roll up to the Barbenheimer double feature” on July 21. But when he posted pictures of the shirt on his Twitter feed, he said, it took off beyond his expectations.“I normally get about three or four likes on anything I post,” Hudson said. But after sharing a few mock-ups of the shirt, he woke up one morning to hundreds of messages from people asking him if they could buy it.Hudson makes the shirts himself, with a friend, and charges $40. So far he said he had made about 150 shirts, with a second batch of about 70 more on the way. It takes him about 45 minutes to an hour to make one T-shirt, which he does by cutting two shirts in half, pinning them together and sewing and pressing them.“I had a couple of movie theaters reach out to me privately to do bulk orders for employees,” he said. “It’s been overwhelmingly positive.”This kind of organic marketing is probably good for both films, said Robert Mitchell, the director of theatrical insights at Gower Street, a company that does predictive analysis for the film industry.Not that the studios’ marketing has been lacking: There are life-size cardboard Barbie boxes in theaters for people to take pictures and a selfie generator. There have been collaborations with multiple brands: The frozen yogurt chain Pinkberry is offering a Barbie flavor, Gap has a line of Barbie-themed clothes, and Airbnb is offering a real-life Barbie Dream House in Malibu. Warner Bros. declined to comment on the movie’s marketing efforts.What all this hype means for box office results for either film is unclear, and awareness doesn’t always translate into attendance, Mitchell said. Predictions for opening weekends are tricky and a lot can still happen before July 21, said David Gross, a movie consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers. Some conservative industry estimates, he said, have “Barbie” opening between $55 million and $65 million in the United States and Canada, and “Oppenheimer” between $40 million and $50 million. Both of those estimates would be strong for a fantasy comedy and a historical drama, neither of which are sequels. Superhero, big action and big animation movies usually open higher, Mr. Gross said.Still, the hype around the films could be beneficial to the numbers. “Every time ‘Barbie’ released a trailer, ‘Oppenheimer’ would start trending,” Mitchell said.“They’re so vastly different,” he said, “that they allow for the narrative that popped up organically: This would be strangest double bill ever.” That online conversation, he said, “is pretty much a gift for distributors.”While social media is full of people showing off their tickets to see the double feature, it’s unclear how many really will. “But it shouldn’t matter,” Gross said. “Audiences are going to find them, and both films are going to do extremely well.” More

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      ‘White Noise’ Review: Toxic Events, Airborne and Domestic

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      Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of the Don DeLillo novel is a campus comedy, a domestic drama and an allegory of contemporary American life.Late in “White Noise,” after the ecological disaster known as the “airborne toxic event,” on the heels of a professional triumph, and in the throes of marital woe, Jack and Babette engage in a discussion of religion with an acerbic German nun. Instead of piety, she offers a pragmatic, borderline cynical view of how faith operates. If she and her colleagues “did not pretend to believe these things,” she says — referring to “old beliefs” in stuff like heaven and hell — “the world would collapse.”The nun, played by the formidable Barbara Sukowa, has been carefully airlifted from the pages of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel into Noah Baumbach’s new film. So have Jack Gladney (Adam Driver) and his wife, Babette (Greta Gerwig), who head up a rambunctious blended family in a Midwestern college town. Jack, known in academia by the decorative initials J.A.K., is the founder of the college’s department of Hitler Studies. Babette teaches life skills to the elderly and infirm.Back to Sister Hermann Marie: “It is our task in the world to believe things no one else in the world takes seriously,” she says. This may or may not be true of nuns, but it can often feel glumly applicable to writers and filmmakers, especially those who try to chart an independent course. Somebody has to care about art and literature. With respect to DeLillo, Baumbach is very much a believer. His “White Noise” is a credible adaptation and a notably faithful one — what an earlier Baumbach character might call the filet of DeLillo’s bristling, gristly book. Very little has been added, and what’s been taken out will be missed only by fanatics. (A warning and maybe a spoiler for DeLillo-heads: The most photographed barn in America is nowhere to be seen.)The challenges inherent in the project are bravely faced and honorably met. The novel straddles domestic realism and speculative satire. It’s a campus comedy stapled to a family drama and tied up with a ribbon of allegory. Its contemporary topics — no less relevant now than in the ’80s — include intellectual fashion, pharmacological folly, environmental destruction and rampant consumerism. These collide with eternal themes: envy, love, the fear of death.Baumbach’s reverence for the material is evident from the trompe l’oeil opening sequence — footage of car crashes from old movies, accompanying a lecture by a professor of popular culture — through the end credits, which turn DeLillo’s vision of supermarket heaven into a bouncy LCD Soundsystem music video. Driver, paunchy and swaybacked, is the very model of a modern middle-aged professor, his intellectual curiosity muffled by a certain complacency. He’s a happy man whose vocation is horror.In the campus lunchroom, he sits in on bull sessions with colleagues, inhaling gusts of competitive explanation. The movie’s dialogue, compulsively true to DeLillo, bristles with explanations and random facts. Except for the toddler, the kids in the Gladney household — Jack’s son, Heinrich (Sam Nivola), and his daughter, Steffie (May Nivola); Babette’s daughter, Denise (Raffey Cassidy) — bounce around the kitchen like human Google results pages, asking out-of-left-field questions and citing semi-relevant data. Jack and his pal Murray (Don Cheadle), the car-crash scholar looking to expand his academic portfolio, are more inclined to hermeneutics. In one of Baumbach’s bravura set pieces, they improvise a classroom duet for an audience of rapt undergraduates, comparing and contrasting mother-love and the death drive in Hitler and Elvis.What they have to say sounds pretty dubious — Murray and Jack broadcast the kind of mock-profundity more common among students than faculty — and the question is to what extent that’s deliberate. “White Noise” is a frequently funny movie that is also utterly in earnest.The kids do say the darnedest things, but they are also vessels of anxiety and avatars of vulnerability. The wounds and salves of family life, in particular the abrasions of matrimony, are Baumbach’s specialty. Jack and Babette’s particular marriage story, which comes into focus in the final third of the movie and is tied up with a noirish pharmaceutical subplot, is the heart of “White Noise” — rawer and sweeter than the surrounding material. Driver and Gerwig give warmth and texture to characters who were, in DeLillo’s pages, a little abstract. Their function was largely to organize the novel’s ideas.Don Cheadle, left, as Murray. He and Jack (Driver), his friend and colleague, project mock profundity in their studies of Elvis and Hitler.Wilson Webb/NetflixThe status of those ideas is the biggest problem with Baumbach’s film. He is perhaps too dutiful in transcribing DeLillo’s vision of contemporary life, a landscape of material comfort and intellectual dread, dominated by brand names, untrustworthy information and the looming threat of destruction.Random insights, like Murray’s observation that the family is the origin of misinformation, are preserved as if they were museum pieces in a carefully curated historical exhibit. Making “White Noise” a period film — the uncannily precise ’80s environment is the work of Jess Gonchor, the production designer, and Ann Roth, who did the costumes — inevitably blunts its impact. Things that might have made readers squirm in the 1980s are shrouded in nostalgia in 2022. It’s hard to feel existential terror when you’re ogling the A.&P. supermarket, the landline phones, the printed classified ads and the boat-shaped rear-wheel-drive station wagons.Within this world, you can see premonitions of our own, most notably in an evacuation shelter where anxious people create in effect an IRL prototype of Twitter, gathering around unverified experts (including Jack’s son, Heinrich) and parroting their wisdom. Baumbach, working on a larger scale than he has before, pulls off a few fine cinematic coups, one of them involving that station wagon fording a swollen stream.But there is something detached about the film, a succession of moods and notions that are often quite interesting but that never entirely cohere. “White Noise” is an expression of sincere and admirable faith. I just wish I could believe in it.White NoiseRated R. The fear of death. Running time: 2 hours 16 minutes. In theaters. More