Sometimes brevity is impossible.
Anyone seeking to summarize Noah Baumbach’s new film,
“The Squid and the Whale,” quickly becomes acquainted
with this fact. Above all, complexity prevails. The movie explores
the collapse of a marriage, the impact of divorce on children, the
strange and sometimes truly bizarre ways sexuality manifests itself
at the entrance of adolescence, the confusion of teenage romance,
the frustration of creative decline, the limits of intellectual
thought, the perpetual pull of the past and the child’s fear
of the unknown. Even the emotional importance of the family cat is
addressed.
But Baumbach, who both wrote and directed the film, would not
have it any other way.
“I try to avoid movies you can sum up in a word or
two,” he said.
And with “The Squid and the Whale,” which screens in
Ackerman Grand Ballroom on Oct. 11, courtesy of the Campus Events
Commission, Baumbach has succeeded admirably.
Set in Brooklyn in the mid-’80s, the film follows the
various trials and triumphs of a family coping with divorce. While
Baumbach refuses to call the film autobiographical, he admits his
personal experiences influenced what appears on the screen.
“While it’s true that I did grow up in Brooklyn and
my parents did divorce, so much of it has been reinvented,”
he said in a recent statement to the press. “What’s
real is the emotion. … It’s emotionally real to
me.”
Much of this feeling is fostered by the performances of Jeff
Daniels and Laura Linney as a couple whose marriage lies on the
brink of collapse.
Daniels plays family patriarch Bernard Berkman, an author with
the dreaded title “once promising.” He wallows in the
hell of lost ““ or imagined ““ literary greatness,
attending nearly empty readings of his work, describing Franz Kafka
as his predecessor, and dismissing “A Tale of Two
Cities” as “minor Dickens.”
His wife Joan, also an author, struggles to cope with
Bernard’s insensitivity and pomposity; it is a role that
takes full advantage of Linney’s dignified vulnerability.
Torn between her duties to family and self, she despairingly
endures a hopeless marriage until divorce becomes inevitable.
Baumbach credits Daniels and Linney for enhancing characters he
felt were already clearly defined before shooting.
“They embodied (the characters) and re-invented
them,” he said. “It was a viscerally fun experience to
work with them.”
While the acting of Daniels and Linney may attract much of the
attention, it is the children of the Berkman family who are
ultimately the focus of “The Squid and the Whale”
““ an emphasis that only emerged late in the process.
“I had started writing a script about two brothers who
were older, in their 30s, dealing retroactively with their
parents’ divorce,” Baumbach said. “The more I
thought about the material, the more I realized the story that felt
most alive was the experience of the moment.”
Walt, a precocious 16-year-old, cheats his way to a first-prize
finish in a talent show and speaks authoritatively about books he
has not read. One memorably humorous scene, a pseudo-intellectual
conversation with his girlfriend in which he describes “The
Metamorphosis” as Kafkaesque, eventually segues into an
obviously uncomfortable kiss interrupted by Walt’s sudden
proclamation, “I wish you didn’t have so many
freckles.”
Baumbach laughed when discussing the scene’s
inspiration.
“When I was a teenager, I was insensitive to my own
girlfriends,” he said. “I suppose in a way that (scene)
was getting revenge on myself.”
The 12-year-old Frank lacks the strange romantic encounters
endured by his older brother, but his embrace of several adult
activities ““ drinking, cursing and self-gratification among
them ““ proves equally odd and amusing.
The tragic yet darkly funny exploration of the Berkman
family’s decline is reminiscent of the 2000 film “The
Royal Tenenbaums,” and with good reason:
“Tenenbaums” director Wes Anderson produced “The
Squid and the Whale.” The longtime friends have already
collaborated on several projects, co-writing last year’s
“The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.”
Baumbach praised Anderson’s ability to enhance the
poignancy of a film.
“He’s great at pinpointing the heart of a scene. Wes
is always the one to say, “˜Can it get
better?'”
With the final scene, the various themes of family, youth,
confusion, fear and, of course, pets converge in a dramatic moment,
capturing the heart of the film as well as explaining the
significance of its title. An underlying simplicity of
Baumbach’s intricate film becomes apparent: he’s
obviously taken Anderson’s mantra to heart.