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The Squid and the Whale November 6, 2005 |
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. Noah Baumbach’s independent drama “The Squid and the Whale” takes its name from a massive exhibit at N.Y.’s Museum of Natural History, featuring a life size replica of a battle between a large squid and a humpback whale. The celebrated exhibit has two meanings in the film, primarily as emotional resonance to the film’s conflicted elder child, torn by the divorce of his parents, and on a more symbolic scale, as a study in natural, territorial dominance and aggression, a bitter and brutal fight that in many ways could come to suggest that of a headstrong battle between husband and wife, the sea as their children, and the end resulting in unhappy joint custody. Taken in context with the first example, the exhibit represents a fond memory for Walt Berkman (Jesse Eisenberg), as he remembers a particularly fun childhood museum trip with his mother, whom he now treats like the villain in his parents’ mutual split. The squid and the whale come to represent the past then, and when Walt visits the exhibit in one of the film’s closing shots, it takes on an importance of guilt, possible acceptance, and growth, as the child begins to embrace his sheltered feeling for his burdened mother, his poor treatment of her, and his unfair father-siding in the divorce. Taken as metaphor though, and not simply, and easily, as childhood nostalgia, the exhibit represents struggle, a predetermined will to fight for your legitimate territory, a natural order of rule (the squid as father, the whale as usual victor mother), and a symbolic statement on the nature of beasts, beasts, ironically, who have no way of talking out their problems, much like a relationship that has escaped all the possibilities of verbal healing. If you read too much into the title, and the revelation of the exhibit near the end of the film, you might think Baumbach’s semi-autobiographical film is a post modernist dissecting of human interaction, but that’s only part of it, for like the more conventional Oscar-winning “Kramer vs. Kramer”, it’s first and foremost the study of a personal environmental change, and the effects it has on two growing, baffled, angry teenage boys. A difficult study at that, with no one to blame, no one to herald, no one to judge, and no one left unscathed, unbruised, and unbroken by one of life’s natural heartbreakers; a busted home. The family at the center of Baumbach’s film is the Berkman family of Brooklyn, who live in a nice brownstone thanks to dad Bernard’s (Jeff Daniels) previous celebrity as a first-class novelist. That’s when things were good, but Bernard is now struggling, teaching advanced writing at a local college, while his wife, Joan (Laura Linney) suddenly finds acclaim, and a publisher, with her own writing, something that leads to jealousy and fighting from the insecure Bernard. Caught in the middle of the fighting, and eventual split, is 17-year-old Walt, who takes after his dad, and all his pretentious intellectual snobbery, and 12-year-old Frank (Owen Kline), a tennis student who grows more and more bothersome and dangerous as the weeks go by. Walt worships his father’s intellectual prowess, and laps up his constant name-dropping, and blames his mother for riding his coattails only to dump him when he’s down, and she’s on the cusp of fame. “This is a great family, why are you screwing it up,” the confused, disillusioned boy screams at his poor mom, “I think you’re doing a foolish, foolish thing.” The product of all this negativity is that Walt morphs into a young image of his selfish father, ignorant about how to treat his own girlfriend, and so disillusioned that when he’s busted by a teacher for plagiarizing a Pink Floyd song, he suggests it a mere formality; “I felt that I could write it,” he says, “the fact that it was already written is a technicality.” I think the lesson is that the influence of his father’s elitist outlook on art, coupled with the pain of a divorce, has blurred the boy’s understanding of what is acceptable behavior, and hypocritical rebellion. “The Squid and the Whale” is a strong film about growing up, accepting, learning to share blame, learning to understand other people’s feelings, and moving on from a sad chapter in a personal history. Eisenberg and Kline are excellent as the frazzled boys who both deal with their pain in separate, troubling ways, and Linney, always good, is the picture of a professional mother burdened by the unfair treatment of her husband and her eldest son, who is quick to label when he learns of previous affairs during his parents’ marriage. And Daniels, sporting a beard and a decade’s worth of intellectual disappointment, is perfect as the pompous father, who thinks it necessary to drop famous names like Mailer, Kafka, Dickens, Fitzgerald, Godard, Truffaut, and Lynch in ordinary conversations to make himself sound the genius he thinks he is. It’s a superb performance of the kind of intellectual you may see at a dinner party, but wish not to get seated next to, because he’s bound to make you feel small if you can’t keep up with his constant references and bulwark. Baumbach’s film gets these human types just right (liberated mother, self obsessed father, distant elder boy, troublesome younger boy), and when separation and change are thrown into the mix, it makes for a hurtful, gripping 80-minute story. Nobody should have to recall their painful childhood for the viewing public, but if they choose to, it could be worse than Baumbach’s therapeutic ‘Squid and the Whale’, but hardly better. “The Squid and the Whale” is playing at the North Park Theater, Hertle Ave. in Buffalo. by Adam Suraf
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