Week 28 : The Squid and the Whale
-Who will win- the squid or the whale?
In this grandiose and complex world there are many diverse ideas and theories surrounding the principles of love, sex and marriage. I still have no idea what my own individual set of values always are (hell, some of them change every day) yet I take comfort in the fact that deep down I am not a cynic. I believe in love- not necessarily the greeting card variety, but that strange and powerful blend of deep rooted friendship, emotional and sexual compatibility. I also believe that there are some people that should never, ever, ever be married.
Bernard (Jeff Bridges) and Joan (Laura Linney) Berkman are such a couple in Noah Baumbach’s brilliant, consistently moving and semi-autobiographical tale of divorce: The Squid and The Whale. This 73 minute picture has more to say about human relationships than any other picture I have ever seen. Not only that, but it is a great source of enlightenment for anyone seeking advice on marriage, divorce, parenting, sexuality, growing up, puberty, tennis or literature. One minute it is a wry comedy- the next, a profoundly moving and universal drama.
“It’s Mom and Me versus You and Dad” is the opening line of the picture. It is said by Frank (Owen Kline), the youngest son in the Berkman household. The foreshadowing could not be more obvious. Frank and his older brother Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) begin the film playing doubles tennis with their parents, two New York literary intellectuals living in Brooklyn in the mid eighties. Bernard and Walt team up against Joan and Frank in a very intense tennis match within the first several minutes of the picture. In a way, they will be doing this throughout the rest of the film- Frank will side with his mother, Walt- his father. Emotions, half truths, and mean spirited comments will be thrown back in forth lack a ping pong ball; constantly shifting the focus of the story and our affinity to the characters. It will all be fun and games, until somebody gets hurt.
There is no surprise that within the first twenty minutes of the picture Bernard and Joan ask the children to come home promptly after school for a family meeting. “The family meeting” has become such a cliché, such a synonym for “divorce talk” that the verbiage could easily belong in an after school special. In Baumbach’s film we don’t feel that way because it is executed just right. After the two children are told that there will be a family meeting, we briefly follow them individually throughout their day. Both are lost in their own minds, knowing that the inevitable has finally come. After school, the two parents sit Frank and Walt down and explain that they are getting a divorce.
Frank immediately bursts into tears. He is emotional, lost and confused- like his mother must have been. Walt sits still and asks questions about logistics, clearly having the intellect and cold, emotionless reaction that his father must have had when the decision was made. In many ways, this is the theme of the whole picture- Emotion vs. Intellect, the feminine vs. the masculine, the heart vs. the head. The common thread in all “family meeting, let’s tell the kids we’re getting divorced scenes” is that there is never really any conversation- no room for discussion. The children will never have a say because the decision has been made. These scenes typically play more like an announcement- a friendly memorandum if you will, than an actual discussion. The beauty of the scene in The Squid and the Whale is that there is one moment of honesty that strikes a chord above all others. Frank is in tears; Joan is comforting him while Walt looks to his father:
“What about the cat?”
--“Shit. We didn’t think about the cat.”
-No one ever thinks about the cat.
The remainder of the picture will follow the lives of these parents and children as they all live separate lives in the wake of the divorce. Bernard is a washed up writer. Once critically acclaimed, his work has sense been disregarded as obtuse by most literary circles. He earns a living teaching creative writing at local community college, spending days in a dreary haze while listening to hack poetry and lewd stories. Bernard’s success peaked years ago, so it is not necessarily surprising that when Joan, his wife of seventeen years, begins to get critical and financial success for her literary journal work, Bernard is less than pleased. Bernard is the consummate intellectual- a connoisseur of fine literature, film and the arts. He is also a really smug prick, giving his wife notes on improving her work and discouraging his children from reading literature or seeing films which he sees as inferior. After the divorce he engages in a purely physical relationship with a young girl in his creative writing class named Lili (Anna Paquin), the kind of girl that sits with her knees wide open, reads nothing but Henry Miller, and writes poems about her cunt.
Joan is certainly more intellectually grounded yet more emotional in her behavior. She wears her heart on her sleeve, gives the children pet names (“Chicken” for Walt, “Pickle” for Frank) and urns for something more. It is clear that she has had many, many years of emotional neglect and all she wants is someone to love. She ends up finding companionship with Ivan (William Baldwin), the local tennis pro at the country club. Ivan is the polar opposite of Bernard- a complete idiot that appears to have a good heart but the intellect of a snow pea. He is the type of person that wears a headband outside of athletics, while also having a penchant for using the phrase “My Brotha” after virtually everything he says.
Then there are the children, Frank and Walt. Baumbach has stated in many interviews that The Squid and the Whale is the semi-autobiographical story of coping with his own parents divorce. I don’t know how in the hell “semi” can even be a part of the previous sentence. Baumbach’s mother was a critic at the Village Voice while his father was a novelist and film critic. I have a feeling that Frank and Walt are both sides of Baumbach- of us all. Frank is raw emotion. Walt is raw intellect. They both side with their respective parents, making the same mistakes in their own young lives- both reaching out in their own ways.
Walt engages in a relationship with Sophie (Halley Feiffer), a young girl in his class. He appears to like her a great deal but his father’s sense of perfectionist elitism ruins the relationship. He looks at everything logically. He can “get serious” with Sophie, but this limits his opportunities for sexual encounters elsewhere- particularly with Lili. Once again, we see the parallel between the parents and the children. Walt has intellect- Frank has heart; both sides of the same coin vying to land on top.
-“Hey you, out there on your own, always doing what you’re told, can you hear me?”
All parties act out in their own ways. Frank, the youngest, acts out the most severely. He drinks alone until he blacks out and masturbates in public- wiping his semen on things he loves (a girl’s locker) and hates (library books- the intellect that destroyed his family). Walt sabotages his relationship with Sophie and other close friends- seeking a perfection that will not come, while also lying and cheating his way to artistic success. At the beginning of the film, before the divorce even takes place, he sings his parents a song that he wrote all by himself. The lyrics (which I have heard dozens of times) are, to this day, some of the best I have ever heard.
Hey you, out there in the cold
Getting lonely, getting old
Can you feel me?
Hey you, standing in the aisles
With itchy feet and fading smiles
Can you feel me?
Of course these lyrics don’t belong to Walt at all. Clearly, in all of Frank and Joan’s superior intellect they have never heard of Roger Waters or Hey You from Pink Floyd The Wall. Things get serious when Walt plagiarizes the song to win the school talent show and is ousted as a fraud. His parents are shocked but the school mandated therapist that Walt is sent to seems to get it. Walt is having a difficult time- he needs acceptance, and needs an outlet for his feelings. The therapist asks Walt to recall a favorite memory. Walt brings up watching Robin Hood with his mother and going to the Museum of Natural History with her. He talks about always being afraid of the diorama of the squid and the whale and his mother comforting him.
“Where was your father?” the therapist asks.
“He wasn’t in that one.” Walt replies. Clearly the mind can never win in matters of the heart.
In the end nothing is really resolved, but there is a certain amount of catharsis in living vicariously through the lives of the characters. Baumbach knows this. He keeps direction simple; his angles are direct and to the point and he never is overtly showy with his cinematography. This is a movie about story, characters, emotions and dialogue and every single element of what matters is delivered flawlessly. The picture doesn’t outstay its welcome- and when it ends we know how we got to that point and why.
I am often asked what my favorite films are. Any lover of the movies will know as well as I that the question is utter nonsense. While my favorite film frequently changes, my top ten are pretty consistent. The Squid and the Whale is in my top ten list, and has been for several years. Watching it now, as I go through my own divorce, I realize how fine of a film it really is. I daresay it’s a masterpiece.
I frequently think about the closing images of the movie. Walt has realized that he loves his mother, resents his father, and just wants to run away from it all. He races across town and to the museum where he finds the squid and the whale. The image haunts my dreams. The enormous whale lumbers against the squid, with razor sharp teeth clinching against the squid’s massive tentacles. The squid fights back, wrapping his arms around the whale- struggling to break free. The image is frozen in time, the two will always be in battle; the whale the mind, the squid the heart. The mind wants to hold the heart back, but the heart struggles to get away. Or maybe the whale is the past, always trying to hold back the future. Either way I think I’m right. I just wonder if I’m the squid or the whale. Shit. I don’t know.
Ask me again tomorrow.
Review and analysis by Shaun Henisey
Cast and Credits:
Frank: Jeff Daniels
Joan: Laura Linney
Walt: Jesse Eisenberg
Frank: Owen Kline
Sony Pictures Classics and Samuel Goldwyn films presents a film written and directed by Noah Baumbach.
Produced by Wes Anderson and Peter Newman. Cinematography by Robert Yeoman.
Running Time: 88 minutes. Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic dialogue and language.
Return Wednesday, July 28th to preview next week's film.