Movie Review

The Squid and the Whale written and directed by Noah Baumbach, with Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Jesse Eisenberg, Owen Kline, William Baldwin, and Anna Paquin. 88 minutes.

The Squid and the Whale ought to serve as a lesson to aspiring filmmakers in how to make the most of music and metaphor. The opening scene, featuring an unfriendly family tennis match, clearly describes the Berkman family dynamic with very few words. Bernard, played deftly by Jeff Daniels, encourages teenage son Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), to play to his mother’s backhand, which Bernard knows is weak. It is no coincidence that Bernard and Jesse are on one side of the net, while Joan (Laura Linney) and pubescent Frank (Owen Kline) are on the other. It mirrors the family where Walt idolizes his father, while younger Frank identifies with his mother.

Noah Baumbach, writer and director of Kicking and Screaming and Mr. Jealousy, has given us an intense, profound, and, at the same time, very funny film. In just 88 minutes, Baumbach presents a multilayered semi-autobiographical film about a Brooklyn family being torn apart by divorce. There is an exceptional economy and precision to this film. Ideal casting, excellent acting, a literate script, and evocative soundtrack make for an almost perfect film, even though it is, at times, unpleasant to watch.

Bernard, an aging writer, is having problems dealing with his wife’s emerging writing success at a time when his career has seen better days. Bernard’s difficulty in dealing with these life changes, coupled with his wife’s infidelity, pushes them into separation, with a complicated custody arrangement. The children, not surprisingly, find themselves struggling to deal with these changes.

Music, it seems, is often included in movies simply as filler or because it sounds good. That is not the case here. Hey You, a central song in Pink Floyd's The Wall, an operatic tale of descent into alienation, gives us a clear understanding of just what Noah Baumbach is trying to achieve in his tight and clever film. Shortly after Walt’s revelation near the end of the film, we hear Street Hassle, Lou Reed’s oddly optimistic and highly sexual post-punk three-movement musical poem about life on the streets of New York. There are other intelligent musical choices that add to the film’s coherence.

Divorce films are not new. It would be too easy to make another Kramer vs. Kramer with emotional screaming matches and tears. The Squid and the Whale avoids that by employing just enough humour to keep it from being too dark, but no so much as to put it in Woody Allen territory. The Squid and the Whale succeeds on many levels: it is a coming of age film, a divorce film, a comedy of sorts, and an example of exemplary film making. One wishes it that it were longer, but leaving the audience wanting more is probably also a sign of a good film.

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