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A Whale of a tale
Another of the year's best screenplays, The Squid and the Whale says as much about divorce as Crash did about racism. Written and directed by Noah Baumbach (co-writer of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), it's too detailed and deeply felt not to be autobiographical. The setting, Brooklyn 1986, also makes it seem specific. It quickly becomes obvious that Bernard Berkman (Jeff Daniels) and his wife Joan (Laura Linney) are not getting along. Part of the problem may be the Star Is Born syndrome: he hasn't had a book published in years while a demand is building for her writing. Their children, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg of The Village), who's maybe 16, and Frank (Owen Kline of The Anniversary Party), about 12, ignore the trouble as long as they can; but one day their parents sit them down after school for a "family conference" to announce they're separating after 17 years of marriage. They've worked out a joint custody agreement ("She has tennis and winter clothes; I get sneakers and camp") they can live with and the boys will have to. Bernard claims Joan is writing her maiden name in books she wants to keep to avoid disputes later. The film is rich in such detail. "Don't most of your friends have divorced parents?" Joan consoles. "Well, now you do too." "Joint custody blows," Walt's best friend tells him. Walt sides with his father, especially after learning his mother has been having affairs for years, and refuses to stay at Joan's house, even though Bernard's new dwelling is a fixer-upper he doesn't fix up. Frank is closer to his mother but acts out in school. He curses all the time and, having just started masturbating, leaves his seed all over the building. For a school talent show Walt sings a Pink Floyd song, claiming it as his own. When busted he shows he's inherited his father's ability to rationalize: "I felt I could have written it so the fact that it was already written was more or less a technicality." Walt finds a girlfriend, Sophie (Halley Feiffer), who looks oddly like his mother, even though Bernard says she's "not the type I go for." That's lucky because when he moves Lili (Anna Paquin), a female student who is his type, into the house, it starts an undeclared competition between father and son. Joan, meanwhile, is having an affair with Ivan (William Baldwin), the sleazy tennis pro who calls the boys "brotha." (Their mother calls them "Chicken" and "Pickle.") Baumbach's script captures the complex, often conflicting emotions of each family member, including the residual love the parents feel for each other that sometimes threatens to lead to reconciliation, and the question of when Walt will lose his virginity and with whom. While Walt's closer to his father now, his happiest early memories involve his mother. One of those memories is of a trip to the Natural History Museum where young Walt was frightened by a huge display of a battle between a squid and a whale, a wonderful metaphor for the fighting he would later witness between his parents. Many will wish they had written The Squid and the Whale and some will doubtless try, but Noah Baumbach wins on a technicality. Steve Warren is a local actor and film reviewer. His reviews can also be seen weekly in the Sunday Paper. |
The Squid and the Whale
Directed by: Noah Baumbach 
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