In reading the other comments for The Squid and The Whale I am both astonished and not astonished at the number of people the simply didn't understand this film. In their defense, The Squid and the Whale is not meant to be easy to swallow. Like the Lou Reed song that is used at the end of the movie, it is abstract, spare and avant-garde. Like Reed's music, it won't be appreciated by everyone. And like Reed's best work, The Squid and The Whale is a masterpiece.
The film documents a breakup of parents with two sons, Frank (12) and Walt (17) in Park Slope, Brooklyn circa 1986. It is based on the personal experience of Noah Baumbach, the writer and the director, and the end of his parents' marriage. Baumbach has decided not to sweeten the story, and his willingness to show all of the character's blemishes, including those of Walt, his 17 year old surrogate, could put people off who are used to having their stories told with heaping spoonfuls of sugar. The events in this movie are bitter, and Baumbach has not diluted them.
The divorce occurs early in the film, bringing about reactions of grief and anger from the children. The father, Bernard, moves into a rundown, ramshackle home and the arrangement is an awkward joint custody, with the children spending alternating days with different parents, both of whom are attempting to embark on their lives without one another. At times they will reach out to one another, but not at that moment when the other is receptive, and the distance grows. In addition, the sons are choosing sides Frank the younger with the mother, Walt the elder following the father. To make matters worse, Bernard's writing career is dying and he is having financial difficulties while the mother's career is taking off. Each of them tries to replace the other with someone new, the mother more successfully choosing someone who if not right for her is at least approximating rightness. The children are caught in the middle of it all.
Baumbach is helped by powerful performances from the leads. Jeff Daniels does not play Bernard, he inhabits him. Bernard is a pompous intellectual, condescending of people and institutions he considers intellectually inferior, but for someone so smug about his intellect, he is surprisingly obtuse, rash on important decisions and incapable of expressing himself without using profanity. As the story progresses, however, it is revealed that he is dealing with an enormous amount of frustration in his personal and professional careers, much of which has been self-inflicted.
Although Laura Linney's performance as the mother, Joan, is not as flashy it is just as strong. A budding writer while her husband's literary career is dying, she has lived in the shadow of this often insufferable intellectual for years. Initially seeming the victim of angry outbursts from her husband, she has a dark passive-aggressive side as well. Linney manages to portray a woman as being both loving and motherly, but at the same time is causing as much damage to her children and the relationship as Bernard.
Owen Kline, son of Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline, plays the role of 12-year old Frank. Frank is wary of his father, openly hoping not to follow in his footsteps as an intellectual and aspiring to become like the local tennis pro, Ivan, who if not a half-wit is certainly no intellectual heavyweight. However, Ivan is amiable and not prone to outbursts of rage and profanity like Bernard. Frank is also having difficulty dealing with a budding sexuality, and in the time spent alone has begun experimenting with alcohol.
The breakout performance for me was Jesse Eisenberg as Walt, the teenager. The events are mostly seen through his eyes, and he isn't dealing with the situation well, either. Baumbach doesn't spare his teenage alter ego any of the withering treatment of the other characters in the film. Walt blames his mother for the divorce, parrots his father's opinions without investigation, and is an intellectual fake, never having read the books he expounds about. This is brought to the fore when he wins his school's talent competition by playing "Hey You" from Pink Floyd's The Wall, claiming it was his own. This subterfuge is soon discovered, and tellingly his father defends his son's outrageous plagiarism by saying it was "his own interpretation", something the son repeats during sessions with a school psychologist. It is during these sessions with the shrink that Walt first mentions the film's eponymous Squid and Whale, a diorama at the Museum of Natural History that frightened him so as a child that he could not look directly at it.
What makes the film so strong is that the bad details are not spared from the viewer. None of the characters is a saint. Both parents are shown as being loving, but they are hurting each other and their children. Arguments could be made for both sides as to which was the worse parent Bernard for his obtuse, overbearing behavior, or Joan for her infidelity. It's a vicious cycle, and neither and both are to blame at the same time.
Then there is Baumbach's final sequence, which is so powerful in its simplicity that it will be aped by filmmakers for years to come. The choice of the music, Lou Reed's Street Hassle, was a stroke of brilliance. The strident hum of the cello echoes Walt's emotions as he runs to the museum, and then the final moments of the film as he now, with the eyes of a man, takes in the diorama that had terrified him as a child, is brilliant.
The Squid and the Whale is one of the best films I have seen in the past five years.
The film documents a breakup of parents with two sons, Frank (12) and Walt (17) in Park Slope, Brooklyn circa 1986. It is based on the personal experience of Noah Baumbach, the writer and the director, and the end of his parents' marriage. Baumbach has decided not to sweeten the story, and his willingness to show all of the character's blemishes, including those of Walt, his 17 year old surrogate, could put people off who are used to having their stories told with heaping spoonfuls of sugar. The events in this movie are bitter, and Baumbach has not diluted them.
The divorce occurs early in the film, bringing about reactions of grief and anger from the children. The father, Bernard, moves into a rundown, ramshackle home and the arrangement is an awkward joint custody, with the children spending alternating days with different parents, both of whom are attempting to embark on their lives without one another. At times they will reach out to one another, but not at that moment when the other is receptive, and the distance grows. In addition, the sons are choosing sides Frank the younger with the mother, Walt the elder following the father. To make matters worse, Bernard's writing career is dying and he is having financial difficulties while the mother's career is taking off. Each of them tries to replace the other with someone new, the mother more successfully choosing someone who if not right for her is at least approximating rightness. The children are caught in the middle of it all.
Baumbach is helped by powerful performances from the leads. Jeff Daniels does not play Bernard, he inhabits him. Bernard is a pompous intellectual, condescending of people and institutions he considers intellectually inferior, but for someone so smug about his intellect, he is surprisingly obtuse, rash on important decisions and incapable of expressing himself without using profanity. As the story progresses, however, it is revealed that he is dealing with an enormous amount of frustration in his personal and professional careers, much of which has been self-inflicted.
Although Laura Linney's performance as the mother, Joan, is not as flashy it is just as strong. A budding writer while her husband's literary career is dying, she has lived in the shadow of this often insufferable intellectual for years. Initially seeming the victim of angry outbursts from her husband, she has a dark passive-aggressive side as well. Linney manages to portray a woman as being both loving and motherly, but at the same time is causing as much damage to her children and the relationship as Bernard.
Owen Kline, son of Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline, plays the role of 12-year old Frank. Frank is wary of his father, openly hoping not to follow in his footsteps as an intellectual and aspiring to become like the local tennis pro, Ivan, who if not a half-wit is certainly no intellectual heavyweight. However, Ivan is amiable and not prone to outbursts of rage and profanity like Bernard. Frank is also having difficulty dealing with a budding sexuality, and in the time spent alone has begun experimenting with alcohol.
The breakout performance for me was Jesse Eisenberg as Walt, the teenager. The events are mostly seen through his eyes, and he isn't dealing with the situation well, either. Baumbach doesn't spare his teenage alter ego any of the withering treatment of the other characters in the film. Walt blames his mother for the divorce, parrots his father's opinions without investigation, and is an intellectual fake, never having read the books he expounds about. This is brought to the fore when he wins his school's talent competition by playing "Hey You" from Pink Floyd's The Wall, claiming it was his own. This subterfuge is soon discovered, and tellingly his father defends his son's outrageous plagiarism by saying it was "his own interpretation", something the son repeats during sessions with a school psychologist. It is during these sessions with the shrink that Walt first mentions the film's eponymous Squid and Whale, a diorama at the Museum of Natural History that frightened him so as a child that he could not look directly at it.
What makes the film so strong is that the bad details are not spared from the viewer. None of the characters is a saint. Both parents are shown as being loving, but they are hurting each other and their children. Arguments could be made for both sides as to which was the worse parent Bernard for his obtuse, overbearing behavior, or Joan for her infidelity. It's a vicious cycle, and neither and both are to blame at the same time.
Then there is Baumbach's final sequence, which is so powerful in its simplicity that it will be aped by filmmakers for years to come. The choice of the music, Lou Reed's Street Hassle, was a stroke of brilliance. The strident hum of the cello echoes Walt's emotions as he runs to the museum, and then the final moments of the film as he now, with the eyes of a man, takes in the diorama that had terrified him as a child, is brilliant.
The Squid and the Whale is one of the best films I have seen in the past five years.