My favourite Film

The Squid and the Whale ⭐⭐⭐⭐

2005: Writer/Director Noah Baumbach

Great ‘80s music amidst family strife.

The Squid and the Whale (2005) is set in Brooklyn in 1986 and details the breakup of the marriage of middle class intellectuals, Bernard and Joan, and the effect this has on their sons, Walt and Frank.

You might expect a film about divorce to tip over into sentimentality but The Squid and the Whale never does.  Instead it combines dark humour with hyper realism and gives an unflinching portrayal of the messy emotions involved in a divorce. The adult characters are deeply flawed and they are shameless in their attempts to get the boys on side. There’s a stark contrast between the intellectual pomposity of Bernard’s (Jeff Daniels) speech and the childish way in which he tries to score points off his estranged wife, Joan (Laura Linney).  This is embodied literally at the beginning of the film when the family are playing a game of doubles tennis and Bernard tells Walt to go for his mother’s backhand because it’s weak. The sides are clearly drawn at this point, pre-break-up, Walt allies himself to his father and Frank sides with his Mother.

Jesse Eisenberg’s character, Walt, is a fake, he emulates the grandiose speech of his father - ‘Don’t be difficult’, tries to pass a Pink Floyd song off as his own and recommends books to his girlfriend that he hasn’t actually read, himself.
Younger brother, Frank (Owen Kline), acts out his trauma in intensely anti-social ways.
All the characters are fully formed but perhaps none more so than Laura Linney’s, Joan. Joan is emerging as a respected writer and both her sons are disturbed by her obvious sexuality. Although Joan is portrayed as somewhat selfish, she also displays great insight, when she tells Walt:
‘You think you hate me, but you don’t’
Walt himself only becomes more sympathetic towards the end of the film when he relives a happy memory from childhood and we get to learn the origin of the film’s title.

There’s a touching moment between Bernard and Joan when they discuss the fact that Joan called Bernard’s father and Joan says she misses him (Bernard’s Dad). Both characters seem less defensive at this point and this instance of vulnerability, amongst other glimpses of humanity, save the film from being too brutal.

There is no disputing the fact that The Squid and the Whale is something of a (albeit underground) classic. Its arena of middle class intelligentsia is a world away from where I grew up and yet I got a massive jolt of recognition when I first saw it.  The striking thing is that for a film centred around people who hide behind intellectual facades, it is the most authentic portrayal of the fallout from a divorce that I’ve ever seen.

Noah Baumbach

Writer/Director Noah Baumbach went on to make While We’re Young (2014) and The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017), amongst others. His films tend to be character driven, rather than plot driven but he always seems to coax brilliant performances from his actors. Adam Sandler is the least annoying I’ve seen him, since The Wedding Singer, in The Meyerowitz Stories.

I'd say that if you are a fan of the films of Woody Allen (before he became problematic) and enjoyed films like Juno and Ladybird then Noah Baumbach films would appeal to you. He's more subtle and just as funny as Judd Apatow, in my opinion, and sometimes it's just good to see a film where a family is more dysfunctional than your own.