Dusk was imminent on the Lido but the lights were bright outside the Mostra Internazionale D’Arte Cinemagrafica. It was opening night for the 79^th annual Venice Film Festival and the world’s media had come to capture the celebration for the premiere feature, White Noise.

The Noah Baumbach-directed satire joined an exclusive list of such heavyweights as La La Land, Birdman, Madres Paralelas, Black Swan, and Gravity that had previously kicked off the world’s oldest film festival. After a few restrictive pandemic years, the Italian showcase was back to full star wattage with a delegation including politicians, models, and of course, celebrities.

The first to arrive was the evening’s honoree, Catherine Deneuve, 50 years after she made her Venice debut in the 1967 classic Belle de Jour.  Being given the prestigious Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award, the French actress told the press earlier that day that she was at a loss to try and put her career in perspective.

“There’s a lot of luck, good encounters, and good decisions, and sometimes bad, or if not bad, wrong. Not everything belongs to the actors, we’re only a part of a film. Sometimes you take good decisions, but the result is not what it is supposed to be.”

Luckily, her decision on what to wear was overwhelmingly well received as Deneuve arrived attired in a flaming red Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccaello dress. Fashion-wise, that set the tone for the evening as such heavyweight designers as Gucci, Armani, Alberta Ferretti and Valentino adorned the likes of Julianne Moore, Jury President; Rege Jean Page; former First Lady Hillary Clinton and the film’s stars Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig.

Once inside the Sala Grande, attendees were shown a surprise video message by Ukraine President Zelensky who appealed to the cinematic crowd for help. He described the war as a “189-day long horror film.”

“It is a drama based on real-life events. A tragedy to the score … of explosions, shots, and air raid alert wails,” he noted. Then continuing, he asked the crowd to raise their voice for their common purpose. “Personalities of culture: directors, producers and actors, screenwriters, cameramen, composers, artistic directors, set designers, critics and many, many more, from many countries in the world, all belonging to the same family of cinema.”

After the introduction of the jury, Baumbach’s cinematic version of Don Delillo’s acclaimed 1985 novel was unspooled. The film tells the story of college professor Jack Gladney (Adam Driver) and his wife Babette (Greta Gerwig), who are each on their fourth marriage and raising their blended family of four children (two coincidentally played by the son and daughter of Emily Mortimer and Alessandra Nivola). The camera takes us inside their boisterous and neurotic home, although trying to keep up with each is a challenge as the high-spirited household is a symphonic layering of high-note conversations and low-note anxiety about death; all of which seem to happen at the same time.

We next meet another eclectic array of players, this time Jack’s colleagues at the University, each with their own unique observations about life, academia and the pursuit of pop culture. Those reflections are played out spectacularly in a battle-of-the-bands moment between Jack and Murray Dunn (Don Cheadle), who go toe-to-toe offering compelling enthrallment over their respective areas of expertise, Elvis and Hitler.

But life changes for all when a freak accident happens just outside their idyllic community, upending their lives and sending the family on a journey of survival and self-reflection, which might be helped by a mysterious drug called Dylar.

Though such directors as James L. Brooks and Barry Sonnenfeld had tried their hand at cracking the cinematic adaptation of the satire, it was Baumbach, who previously helmed such films as The Squid and the Whale and the Golden Globe-winning Marriage Story, that managed to navigate the project.

During the festival, the HFPA spoke to Baumbach on his approach to adapting the novel and what he felt were the relevant themes of the project.

What about DeLillo’s language felt so natural for you?

It felt familiar, I would say. When I was rereading it, which happened to by chance coincide with the pandemic happening, I both couldn’t believe how relevant it felt and how it felt so much about the moment. But I also was struck by how I felt like whatever moment was going on, it would feel relevant to that. And at the same time, I started not only taking on his language but finding my own voice within his language. It was something that felt very… familiar, I think is the right word.

Part of the themes of the story focus on how we obtain information, whether it be from the family, the other professors, or the media, and what we do with it.

Absolutely. Well, I saw the family. There’s that great line that Murray Dunn’s character says that family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. I think we see that in our families all the time, just the things that are said, the way we even talk about our own family history is we start to embellish, truths change. I thought, well, what a wonderful sort of representative and representation of not only the country America, but sort of the world at large, and how we take in information. So, you have the kids who are constantly going maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. They don’t even know. I found it very funny. I’ve often played with language and how language shifts within conversation. But I also think it’s very much true of the moment, and I mean, many moments.

How so?

You’re talking about television and radio then. Now of course we have the internet, but I think the movie is sort of very much about how we create these rituals and these strategies to try to hold off danger, death, and sometimes death comes, as it does in part two, it comes for us. And in a way, we don’t even know how to react. We look to TV. We look to the other people in the other cars. How do we even know if this is real danger or not, because we’re so used to seeing it on television? And part three is, okay, we’re back to all of our strategies, our rituals. We’re back shopping in the supermarket, but we’ve seen something new, and what do we do with that information? And I found the message in the novel and the message that I set out in the movie is it’s an opportunity to become closer. The family starts to look more inward and then they start to come closer.