In the end I really wanted to love “Noise,” because as a born and bred New Yorker, I tend to sympathize with character David Owen whose humble nature makes it impossible for him to ignore the random city sounds around him that eventually begins to disrupt his life. Regardless of what he does he is a fish out of water, and soon he becomes a beast who uses that disturbance and somehow gains something of a thrill out of it. He loves to hate what he hates, and he never quite knows why, even after confrontations with the mayor and a courtroom stand off. By the final scene he’s embraced his lunacy, but hasn’t found a way to resolve it. And that’s where the problem lies in the narrative, Henry Bean never quite knows what message he’s trying to convey.
Sometimes the film plays like a low key “Fight Club” rambling against economic turmoil, pent up aggression, and using David’s displays of violence and vandalism as ways of coping with his impotence, it can often feel like it’s taking off from “Falling Down” about an average man who has just had enough of coping with life’s annoyances and decided to strike back, sometimes it wants to be a political satire with William Hurt’s cringe inducing portrayal as New York’s inept comical mayor, and it suddenly turns in to a courtroom drama with David making a grandstand against the mayor and never quite conveying what his whole intent is. Or maybe we’re just following this lunatic along in his pursuit to drive everyone mad with him. In either case, lack of resolution tries to shroud itself with ambiguity, thus “Noise” is ultimately just a distraction.
Bean makes some interesting insight in to the way of living in New York. Speaking as someone who has had to endure the endless noise pollution in the Bronx, I can understand why David finds it sometimes impossible to ignore the nuisances. But Bean also has something to say about how New Yorkers are an interesting animal that’s found a way to adapt to their surroundings and tune out the noise around them. One mechanic who helps David in his crusade even explains that from up close a car alarm is horrible, but from a distance, it can be soothing. And he’s right. Sometimes I’ve lied in bed and fallen asleep to the sounds of a distant car alarm going off for hours.
But what Bean examines is a man who hasn’t adapted, a man who is beyond evolution who can’t adjust along with his wife and daughter, and how this man takes that flaw and uses it as a form of sadistic pleasure. But that’s undermined by the foggy intentions of this piece. Is Robbins making a statement about the city driving a denizen mad, or is he mocking the constant whiners who refuse to adjust to their surroundings? Is David something of a mad vigilante or is he just a lunatic incapable of coping with his mental stress? What does his frustration with the noise ultimately represent, and does wife Ellen learn to cope with his own insanity? None of this is ever made quite crystal clear for its audience, thus everything is relatively left up in the air.
In short instances and moments, “Noise” has insights to make and it can make them quite well while posing some observations about the unique animal that is the New Yorker. Are we just sheep for accepting these nuisances, or stronger for enduring them? Are we apathetic or just wise for acknowledging there’s nothing we can do about this noise? Nevertheless, somewhere deep down there’s a masterpiece looming, but on the surface, there’s just nothing but an unfocused dark comedy. With a clearer intent and a firmer grasp on its narrative and overall statement, “Noise” could have and should have been a demented little gem, but as it is, it’s just a muddled, sloppy, and often incoherent little rant about New York with some good observations to make while never exorcising it in to a think piece worth sitting through with an actual point.