Director Noah Baumbach
The director surrounded by his cast at Sundance, 2005
THE SQUID AND THE WHALE A-
USA (88 mi) 2005
d: Noah Baumbach
Joint custody blows
Hilarious, angry, and devastating all at the same time, an
emotionally anguishing film, showing us a well-educated upper middle class
Brooklyn family in deterioration, as the liberal-minded, openly progressive
parents one day announce to their two close-knit sons that they are separating. What follows is a walking nightmare for all
participants, but especially devastating to the two boys, who are divided up
like leftover helpings for dinner, mom’s night or dad’s night, with rules that
they must strictly adhere to that make little or no sense. Jeff Daniels plays Bernard, one of the most
despicable characters seen onscreen short of a cold-blooded killer, a smug,
overbearing know-it-all father who uses knowledge as an absolute, who was a
successful writer at one time but now toils in obscurity as a literary
professor, blaming everyone for his troubles but himself. He’s a terrible judge of character, however,
especially within his own family, as no one else’s opinion counts except his
own, and he’s constantly defining the world around him with set-in-stone
judgments and conclusions, including his own wife and children, confining them
to a world that exists only in the narcissistic arrogance of his own mind,
displaying little self-awareness, resorting to self-pity when he doesn’t get
his way, reduced to his standard comeback, “Don’t be difficult.” As a result,
the older son is a carbon copy, an opinionated copycat who blames his mom for
their separation, simply because his dad does, and refuses to have anything to
do with her. Laura Linney as Joan is also
a writer, but is constantly denigrated as second rate by dad, so when she
breaks from the nest, it’s her writing that gets recognized, and with her
newborn freedom, she literally blooms, like the lilies of the field, much to
her husband and older 16-year old son (Jesse Eisenberg) Walt’s outright hatred
and jealousy. The younger 12-year old
son Frank (Owen Kline) is more in tune with the softer nature of his mom, but
as we watch his world unravel, it veers into painfully unfamiliar
territory. As time passes, everyone’s
shortcomings become more evident, allowing emotional positions to shift. What is amazing here is how much the children
resemble their parents, where at times it’s downright creepy.
Billy Baldwin, Anna Paquin and Halley Feiffer are all
excellent in side roles, while the acting overall is superb. Having the look of cinéma vérité, grainy,
shot on Super 16mm with a handheld camera, this is one of the better written
and edited films out there, as there is no wasted motion whatsoever, every
scene flows so perfectly into the next, which is significant as the exquisite
pacing increases the dramatic power by keeping everything so compact and
concise. What is said, and how it is
said, is simultaneously humorous and brutal, like a variation on Mike Nichols’ Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), where words so skillfully utilized become
weapons. The film never dwells or
lingers, and always adds the grace notes of wit and humor, but the cumulative
effect reveals a slow deterioration of the kid’s personalities, with moments
that feel like a descent into madness.
The accompanying music sounds dated, feeling like the epitome of indie
light, much of it humorous references from other films, yet always in synch
with the material, which is surprisingly original, brutally honest, and openly
revelatory, revealing the intricate personal details of unraveling
relationships from a divorce, where the safety net has been pulled out from
under them, leaving them in a no man’s land of unfamiliar territory. This is a people behaving badly film,
displaying some of the more egregious behavior, yet the underlying
circumstances of clashing forces are carefully scrutinized, particularly the
effects on the children, often overlooked, yet here it becomes the central
focus. The film was written with them in
mind, as Baumbach is a product of a mid 80’s divorce between two literary
parents (novelist Jonathan Baumbach and former Village Voice film critic Georgia Brown), where the personal
details of this film speak like a confessional, weirdly bizarre yet so absurdly
devastating, where the distance of time allows for a humorous perspective,
which may be the director’s saving grace, as otherwise he’d be consumed by the
depths of the horror and grief, as it’s a very male-centric film, where so much
of the film is viewed through the lens of a wounded and self-absorbed male
psyche, where the arrogance and outright delusions of the father are passed
onto his sons, so representative of what today would be described as toxic male
behavior.
Much of the film revolves around the idea of privilege,
almost exclusively white privilege, which allows you to get away with almost
anything, as rich kids are overly pampered and nothing is ever their fault,
where they’re given a longer leash than others in similar circumstances, as
wealth offers an unspoken protection.
Using his father’s condescending literary opinions as gospel, Walt
blindly mimics his every word, disparaging anyone else’s views, exactly as his
father does, where all that matters to him is the ultimate judgement, speaking
authoritatively, which he utters without even reading the material. He actually manages to appear intellectual on
the surface, yet has no underlying foundation.
This culminates with Walt winning a school talent contest with what he
claims is an original song, except it was written by Roger Waters of Pink
Floyd, Pink Floyd - Hey You (Official
Video) YouTube (4:34), part of the best-selling album of 1980, The Wall, a rock opera selling over 30
million copies (and the best-selling concept double album ever), ending up
having to return the prize money, offering the absurd explanation that he “could
have written it,” which speaks to the entitlement these kids feel. However, this also leads to a mandatory
therapy session that is remarkable in its understated impact, as it literally
opens a new door of self-realization, suddenly questioning for the first time
the impact of hero worshipping his father.
Frank, on the other hand, is left alone so often that he routinely raids
the liquor cabinet, drinking beer, uttering the profanity of a sailor on shore
leave, while also developing abnormal sexual habits that are beyond disturbing,
accentuated by the music of Tangerine Dream, Tangerine Dream Love on a
real train original - YouTube (5:12), which comes into play when his father
inexplicably leaves him alone for three days (with his mother on a trip out of
town), never bothering to pick him up, as scheduled. One of the greatest strengths of the film is
the depiction of the parents, whose separate lives are so meticulously
organized, right down to who gets the cat on what night, so their neglectful
behavior, particularly when it comes to Frank, just seems so improbable. It does not seem very likely that such
well-educated parents, clueless and self-centered as they are, whose interest
in their children borders on the obsessive, would allow that to happen, yet
it’s a clear indication of falling through the cracks, where the hideousness of
this act can’t be overstated. The
spiraling aftereffects of their marital breakup are starkly accurate, unsparing
and brutally depicted, at worst sad and psychologically horrific, where it
takes the poetry and painful anguish of consummate New Yorker Lou Reed, Lou Reed - Street Hassle
(complete music video) - YouTube (11:00), to turn these catastrophic events
into an anthem for our times.
Sundance Directing Award
American dramatic: Noah Baumbach, “The Squid and the Whale”
Sundance Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award
American dramatic: Noah Baumbach, “The Squid and the Whale”
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