The Squid and the Whale

You've doubtless heard the theories of heredity vs. environment.  What if someone was a product of both? A walking, talking (perhaps not yet thinking) amalgam of all the worst and possibly some of the best traits which distinguish your maternal and paternal units. You can't do a blessed thing about your genes, and when you're still a teen, you often can't remove yourself from the web of influence of your folks. Even when they get divorced. Frank is 12. Walt is 16. Both are jolted into reality when their parents, the once-famous author Bernard (Jeff Daniels) and his rising-star scribe ex-wife-to-be, Joan (Laura Linney) announce their split. 

Even before, it is obvious that Frank sides with mom and Walt with dad. You hear the impassioned defenses when one sibling lashes out against the other parent. This only intensifies when arrangements are made for dad to move out, and a rotating schedule for when the kids stay with their father is agreed upon. Battle lines are now tangible. Dad is especially bitter as he settles in a relative dump several subway stops away from the cozy Park Slope digs he once shared in Brooklyn. As we switch between households, the resentments on all sides simmer and boil over. But how did it come to this? Bernard is a self-centered prig, the kind who, when asked what he thinks of a certain novel, proceeds to tell you that it is a "minor" version of that author and continues by telling what he believes is better. We all know snobs like this. I've been one myself, Lord help me.  Such an elitist stance guarantees friction with your significant others. 

Bernard was once a laudable artist, having written at least one classic. For years he attempted to overcome the sophomore slump but was never able to duplicate that success. Never again able to hobnob with all the literary lights like George Plimpton at Manhattan soirees. Today, in 1986, Bernard teaches literature to undergrads and drowns in self-loathing. Meanwhile, Joan had apparently quietly suffered for quite a while, assuaging herself with affairs and her own attempts at authorship. Today, her ship has come in. In fact, after Bernard exits, one of her pieces is accepted by the New Yorker. Where does this leave Frank and Walt? On opposite sides. Their atmosphere of curt (yet literate) parental angst has both debilitated and toughened them with a maturity of which they're not yet quite aware. The realization will come later. 

Until then, they make all the mistakes teenagers make, like breaking up with the girl who really cares for you in favor of a vapid, flashier model. Frank, feeling especially alienated, acts out his confusion over his budding sexuality by spreading his semen all over his middle school. All of the characters are sexually motivated, usually to destructive ends. Joan reveals a history of adultery. Bernard engages with one of his students (and eventual boarder), and Walt, the character through whom we experience much of THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, is a wreck of a confused kid who can't quite reconcile his opposite gender relationships: girlfriends or mother. With Bernard as a role-model, this is not surprising. Writer-director Noah Baumbach bases his screenplay on many of his own experiences.

Growing up the son of two authors, he evidently experienced a sour upbringing, so denoted by amoral attitudes about fidelity, and caustically expressed feelings about those with lesser taste. I had to laugh when Bernard explains to Frank what a "philistine" is: someone who isn't interested in interesting music or films. I imagine Baumbach learned the same from his father, and despite what must have been a torturous adolescence, developed into a fine artist who went on to make interesting films like this and MARGOT AT THE WEDDING and KICKING & SCREAMING. The performances are excellent, needless to say. Daniels is just perfect as the enraged narcissist, a manipulative, severely damaged soul who somehow believes it is possible to bring his family back together.  Linney embodies the toughness such a woman would develop once the initial dazzle she experienced with a character like Bernard wore off. Owen Kline (son of Kevin and Phoebe Cates) seems to know the pre-pubescent hell all too accurately. Jessie Eisenberg dutifully emulates his character's father's fractured, somewhat sociopathic paradigm.

Baumbach originally wanted Wes Anderson (who produced this movie) to direct it. Anderson saw that the script would best be realized by the author, and knew that Baumbach wouldn't be too close to the material as to effectively express it. Still, there is at least one moment that feels Andersonian: a brief scene where Bernard and Walt watch Lili (Anna Paquin) walk down a hall. The camera stays on them for several seconds. Watch it and tell me it doesn't feel like a moment from THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS or RUSHMORE! We all bring our own baggage to the art we experience. Again I experienced some of the sting of familiarity as I watched this movie. I grew up during the same time period as Walt. I was originally from Brooklyn (though had moved away in the early 70s). I had a father who verbally accosted pretty much everyone. He was not an author, but he had some diverse tastes, and he exposed his only son to literature and celluloid that would in some ways define the offspring, for years to come. My father and mother fought much like Bernard and Joan do in this film, but they didn't split until I was in college.

At that time even, I was no less confused about life than Walt, though at least I never did try to pretend that Roger Waters' "Hey You" was a song that I had written myself. Baumbach doesn't go to the same great pains other directors have to evoke a specific time, but he gets the mid 80s feel just right anyway, in ways that are hard to explain. It felt like the 80s to me, if only by event. This was what I had experienced in 1986. And on the soundtrack, we even hear 1970s Schoolhouse Rock tunes. How perfect. A piece of childhood, still floating through the minds of Frank and Walt, perhaps longing for the days when their family domicile had the illusion of contentment. As I watched THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, I prayed that Frank and Walt would grow up to be well-adjusted adults, perhaps to create their own art, and not at the expense of fruitful relationships. I'm glad Baumbach sufficiently survived to share this wounded little tale with the world.