The squid and the whale (2005)

The marriage of Bernard and Joan is coming to an end. They are both writers. Bernard is having a spell of writer's block, while Joan is being published in The New Yorker. The divorce is a bitter one, and it affects the kids, Walt and Frank. Walt takes his dad's side. quoting the Author's judgments on kafkaesque Kafka and Dicken's best works. Frank, the younger brother, is sent off to tennis classes with Ivan. Walt and Frank seem just as unhappy as their parents. Walt cannot decide whether he desires his girlfriend or not, and Frank, about twelve years old, likes to booze at home. Bernard encourages Frank to be ambitious. To pursue the career of tennis instructor, just like Ivan, is not "serious work". Bernard shares some pieces of advice to Walt as well. While young, he should not settle down, but try out the girls. The squid and the whale can boast great performances. Jeff Daniels is absolutely hilarious as the self-absorbed father. The look on his face while he plays an ever-serious game of ping-pong with Frank is priceless. The nervous movements of the camera, bright colors and subdued music provide the right backdrop for this kind of quietly intelligent story. I said it is an intelligent film - that means it doesn't feel the need to brag about its intelligence. In just a few minutes, it is as if we know the characters, their flaws, their peculiar tics. This could of course have been a cheap way to create Universal Feelings towards Troubled Adolescence, but that is not what is going on. Rather than going for the big dramas, Noah Baumbach, director, opts for awkward silences and embarrassing lines (as when Bernard, in a late scene, is having a heart attack, but even as he is carried off on a stretcher, he makes a one-liner about Godard). There are many comic scenes in the films, but there are no gags. The squid and the whale shares many characteristics with similarly themed independent films, but that does not take away its merits. The sadness it evokes rarely has the ring of artificiality. The plot may follow the path we have got used to by now, the Sundance path, but it treats the material in an affectionate, lucid way. That it is a good film is further shown by the way I liked it much better the second time than the first. This time around, as the turns of the story were familiar to me, I admired the details of the scenes, and highly enjoyed them.