The Squid and the Whale Review

October 6, 2005 11:35 AM
by [email]

Noah Baumbach’s “The Squid and the Whale” could be summed up in one word- honest- but that wouldn’t do it justice. Managing to make a painful subject funny, Baumbach, who earned an A for post-collegiate humor with “Kicking and Screaming” and “Mr. Jealousy,” doesn’t sell his humor short.

The year is 1986, the place- with much specificity- is Park Slope, Brooklyn, and Joan and Bernard Berkman (Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels) are clearly having problems. Baumbach accentuates this by beginning the film with a tennis match, pitting the bickering parents against each other from shot one.

Currents of jealousy are running strong. Bernard, a once-lauded author turned stuffy academic, has watched Joan’s literary star take off with publications in The New Yorker and a novel deal. Still, the Berkman’s sons- twelve-year-old Frank (Owen Kline) and sixteen-year-old Walt (Jessie Eisenberg) - are shocked when their parents announce a separation.

“The Squid and the Whale” is really the boys’ story, and these two brothers are saddled with the most frustrating joint custody arrangement I’ve ever heard of. When Bernard buys a house across the park (another country for Park Slopers), Frank and Walt are shuttled back and forth not just every other weekend but every other day.

Both gifted young actors, Kline and Eisenberg aptly handle their characters’ tricky quirks. In the wake of the messy divorce, Walt enters a talent show with a Pink Floyd song he claims he wrote, and, even more troublingly, starts taking his father’s romantic advice (“A lot of students have come on to me.

Don’t tie yourself down.”) The teenager, then, is torn between sweet girlfriend Sophie (Halley Feiffer) and his father’s “raciest” writing student, Lili (Anna Paquin), who has moved into a spare room in Bernard’s Flatbush house.

Meanwhile, Frank is drinking beer, smearing sperm around his middle school, and idolizing the dim-witted tennis pro (William Baldwin) who is having an affair with Linney’s Joan.

Incestuous? A little. But the claustrophobia Baumbach creates works perfectly. I can count on one hand the number of films that depict divorce truthfully, and this beautifully developed quartet of character studies ranks first place.

Bernard, an aging academic with an eye for students, is perhaps the most abhorrent of the Berkmans, but can you ever really dislike Jeff Daniels? The actor’s worn-down lovability worked wonders two decades ago in “Terms of Endearment,” and if you moved Flap twenty years forward and added a nastier mean streak, you might get the complicated Bernard.

A philandering writer on the brink of depression, Joan is, in Linney’s hands, simultaneously sympathetic and sleezy. The actress is particularly good and gifting us emotions behind a well-constructed façade- one that breaks down in a moving scene near the movie’s end.

If the plot drags slightly in the second act, it picks up in here. Without fanfare, the final Berkman confrontation gives both parents a chance to let simmering emotions loose. As the boys stand by bewildered, Bernard defends his good intentions, and Joan lets out a laugh that’s “The Squid and the Whale” in miniature. It’s as spontaneous, bitter, and truthful as anything you’re likely to see onscreen.

Grade: A-