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April 25, 2006
The Squid and the Whale
The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach, 2005, USA) gets it title from a stunning display of these animals in the Museum of Natural History in New York's Central Park. Legend has it that the squid is the only natural predator of the whale. It is not obvious who is the predator in this sad and highly moving tale of divorce set in mid 1980s New York, but the ones who suffer are the ones who least deserve it.
The story is told by Walt, (Jesse Eisenberg) and is a semi-auto biographical account of the directors own teenage years. Walt brutally rejects his mother Joan (Laura Linney - Tales of the City, Love Actually, and the forthcoming Australian film Jindabyne) and more or less sides with his father Bernard (Jeff Daniels - Terms of Endearment, Pleasantville) a university academic who is finding his highly intellectual writing is increasingly difficult to get published. Joan's affairs have been discovered and her first novel has been accepted for publication which further inflames Bernard's anger - marvelously portrayed on the tennis court and while playing table tennis with his younger son Frank (Owen Klein)whose emotional problems are displayed by smearing his semen about the school and getting drunk when he is forgotten when his parents go on separate trips away. Walt must not only negotiate his way through the acrimony of his parents' divorce but also his own discovery of sex and relationships. Bernard's failure is manifested in the run down house he moves into, his appalling cooking, and the unsuccessful relationship he has with one of his students, but he has his sons on side, it is Walt's slow realisation that his father is a first-class asshole that grants Walt his epiphany.
Although I am not a fan of hand held camera work, Baumbach and his cinematographer (Robert Yeoman - Drugstore Cowboy and Rushmore) use the style well, involving the audience in the claustrophobia of the disintegration of the relationship. There is a brief but stunning montage of images New York subway stations, and the interiors are subtly lit to reveal the stark contrast betwwen the two houses. Editing is superbly carried out by Tim Streeto.
Strangely this is the second film I have seen this year that involves tennis (Match Point) and even more strangely this film reminded me a little of Woody Allen's Annie Hall in which Allen meets Annie (Diane Keeton) while playing tennis.
This is a remarkable, realistic, film that brings you into the lives of characters who's lives have disintegrated, but are slowly finding their way to resolution. For me the film has just the right amount of humour and ends at just the right moment.
4 1/2
Posted by andrewrenaut at April 25, 2006 11:38 AM