The Squid and the Whale: Opinionated Movie Comment #2

The Squid and the Whale, Jesse Eisenberg, David Benger, Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, William Baldwin; dir. Noah Baumbach
The Squid and the Whale, apparently based on the writer-director’s own past, presents the dissolution of a family. The father, Bernard (Daniels), is a once accomplished novelist; the mother, Joan (Linney), is a new novelist, and the older son, Walt, is not impressed. He is also not impressed with a number of other things he learns about Mom along the way. Walt (Eisenberg) is deeply under the thrall of Dad, to the extent of parroting his literary opinions about books that he himself has never read and defending Dad’s every action to his little brother, Pickle (Benger). Eisenberg, by the way, played the protagonist in Roger Dodger, as well as the youngest brother in the short-lived television series Get Real, and in this film he again allows his quiet rapidity to bring to life a pained teen groping awkwardly toward adulthood. David Benger, who plays Pickle, is one to watch; he gets some of the best lines and the ickiest and most painfully laugh-inducing subplot. But he never plays it dishonestly or obviously. It seems that Bernard and Joan loved each other deeply once, but life has had its way with them. As Linney says in the ancillary material, no one is entirely to blame, and no one is free of blame. That may just include the boys. Neither handles the split well, though the manifestations of their pain are very, very different. There’s not much more I can say without taking away from the film. So much of what I loved in this movie resides in the smallest of moments, a line here, a seemingly mundane act there. Deception, often of the self-directed kind, is a rule that all the family members seem to follow, though Mom is mostly honest with herself and sometimes painfully so—but not until forced—with her children. The use of music is subtle and pointed; like his producer, Wes Anderson, Baumbach has found small forgotten tunes and woven them neatly into his tapestry. Also like Anderson, Baumbach merges absurdity (watch Pickle—ew) with verisimilitude; at one point in the film, I wondered if it was in fact directed by Anderson (and here I’m thinking of films like Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, not the later Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic, which Baumbach co-wrote). This director doesn’t cop Anderson’s style, but there is a definite similarity of atmosphere. The Squid and the Whale is more real (though not necessarily more true) than Anderson’s works, and for some this film will be hard to watch. It could easily strike too close to home. There’s a lot right with this movie, and almost nothing wrong. Baumbach and company have created a painful and almost real portrayal of a family in distress—or is that in crisis? (image copyright Squid and Whale Inc., 2005)