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The Squid and the Whale
It would be really easy to start making comparisons between The Squid and the Whale and works of Wes Anderson, considering the multiple collaborations Baumbach and Anderson have done, in addition to their shared mockery of intellectuals, gently delusional but well-meaning protagonists and leisurely plotted schemes. After all, who better to make fun of intellectuals than intellectuals themselves? But I don’t want to do that. Mostly because Baumbach affects me in more profound ways than Anderson ever has, due to Anderson’s cynical flippancy and heartfelt but mostly laugh-at-able antics.
Squid starts mid-gallop, in the middle of a family tennis game that has turned ugly. With a kind of passive-aggressive elegance that Baumbach brilliantly dances around, it becomes immediately obvious that the family is on the verge of collapse and whose side each child will land on after the split. The highly critical teenaged Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) steers toward his father, the haughty, has-been writer Bernard (Jeff Daniels) while the younger, though no less serious, Frank (Owen Kline) sides with Joan (Laura Linney). Joan, after having been a housewife for many years, has recently become a successful writer herself, much to the chagrin of Bernard, who uses her success as a convenient scapegoat for why their marriage fell apart. Well, that and the multiple affairs Joan had, but mostly her success.
Long, static shots give the film a feeling of detachment, mirroring the white noise of discontentment that pervades the Berkman family throughout their attempts at coping with divorce. Add to the mix a sleepy soundtrack featuring Loudon Wainwright III and one by Kate McGarrigle (you might know them as the parents of Rufus and Martha Wainwright). They’re divorced now, of course, and the music artfully dispels any notions of happily-ever-afters. But as depressing as Squid is, it’s also remarkably funny, as most of life’s tragic fauxetry often is. Take this scene, where a school counselor tells Bernard and Joan that their son has been spreading his seed all over school.
Bernard Berkman: How do you know they were both Frank's?
Ms. Lemon: Well, I suppose it's possible other kids are masturbating and spreading their semen around the school as well... It's possible, but, uh, somewhat unlikely.
Bernard Berkman: Oh, it happens, I'm sure, much more than we know.
Joan Berkman: Bernard, have you ever done anything like this?
Bernard Berkman: I'm not going to answer that.
Unlike a robust diet of post-apocalyptic vampire warfare and sun-kissed fairytales, (which is what I watch when I want the world to seem formulaic and therefore manageable) Baumbach cuts right to the heart of the emotionally jarring, those paper-cut-small-but-ultimately-devastating moments that either scar us for life or at least give us plenty of fodder for therapy. It’s also not surprising that the film’s realness stems partially from the fact that it’s based on Baumbach’s actual childhood, his father being novelist Jonathon Baumbach and his mother, Georgia Brown, a Village Voice film critic. One of the reasons Baumbach is so successful at bitch-slapping us with emotional menace without appearing like art house piffle is because of his sparseness. And while there is some reconciliation between Walt and Joan near the film’s end, there are no real “moral of the story” moments, nothing that would place Squid in the category of the sugary or sentimental. As much as we wince at scenes like Frank smearing his jizz all over library books and people’s lockers, we wince even more when we see Walt emulating the terrible behavior of his father—blindingly criticizing works of literature and people, passing ideas off as his own, etc. After winning the talent show by claiming he’d written a popular Pink Floyd song, he gets caught and defends his plagiarism with “Well, I felt I could’ve written it, therefore the fact that it was already written is a technicality.” These displays of fucktardedness are so painful to watch because of their seeming absence of feeling. There’s no sensationalism present in Walt’s denial, nor in Bernard’s feeble attempts to win Joan back (“Remember the one time I made burgers when you had pneumonia?”), nor in Frank’s burgeoning alcoholism, nor in the ways Joan breezes off her affairs as whimsical nothings. But they aren’t frivolous either. In the spirit of Lorrie Moore, Baumbach has the capability of making you laugh and cry in the same breath. It’s devastating, but worth it.
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