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THE SQUID AND THE WHALE Send This Review to a Friend
The dynamics of a family in the throes of a marriage failure are dramatized with warmth, insight and humor in “The Squid and the Whale,” showcased at both the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival and written and directed by Noah Baumbach, who entertains us even while pinpointing the pain the adults and their offspring are enduring. Baumbach makes an old topic look fresh again.
Performances, as well as the screenplay, have a lot to do with it. Jeff Daniels does one of his best acting jobs as Bernard, an educator, author and head of his family in Park Slope, Brooklyn, in 1986. Bernard is a control freak, is absurdly competitive, lacks sensitivity, feeds his inflated ego, ignores the needs of his wife and tries to mold his children in his image. In short, he is a royal pain, and Daniels nails him perfectly and amusingly.
Laura Linney plays his wife Joan, also a writer, who is frustrated, restless and unhappy with her lot and her husband’s behavior. The 16-year-old son, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), is turning out to be a clone of his father’s attitudes, while the younger boy, Frank (Owen Kline), who is 12, is less bulldozed and has affinity with his mother. Linney, in another of her fine performances, makes us feel Joan’s desperation, and when Joan decides enough is enough and leaves Bernard, everything hits the fan.
The film is filled with the sort of character revelations and observances of the situations in which the characters find themselves that make the story lively, bright and candid. Young Owen Kline is especially enjoyable and distinctive. (By the way, he is the son of star Kevin Kline.) Everyone learns something during the transitions that occur, and Baumbach’s film has heart as well as a sense of the absurd. A Samuel Goldwyn Films and Sony Pictures Entertainment release.
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