The Squid and the Whale (2005)
Once upon a time, a few weeks ago, I was scrolling through the Netflix app looking for movies to download for my flight to Los Angeles from New York City. The content that Netflix allows you to download is much more limited than what you can stream regularly, and I randomly decided upon the 2005 Noah Baumbach film, The Squid and the Whale. This would be the second Baumbach movie I have watched in that month, I had watched Marriage Story (2019), which I thoroughly enjoyed just a few days prior.
While I wish I hadn’t been confined to a tiny iPhone screen on a loud airplane in an uncomfortable seat to watch this divorce dramedy, this movie was truly impressive. Set in Park Slope, Brooklyn (where I’m from!) in the 80’s, Bernard (Jeff Daniels) and Joan (Laura Linney) are divorcing. Their two sons (Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline) are deeply affected by this event and they start to choose sides. The older son, Walt, sides with his Dad, and the younger son, Frank, sides with his mom. Tensions truly start to rise in the family when Joan’s writing career skyrockets passed the failed writing career of Bernard, who is a professor.
The plot of this movie is quite simple, which allows room for the characters to be developed in a more complex way. From the very first scene of the film, when the foursome is playing doubles tennis, Joan and Frank versus Walt and Bernard, we see the way the movie’s characters will interact with each other. Throughout the film, Bernard is a very cold husband and father. Throughout the tennis match, Bernard purposely hits the ball aggressively to Joan, and criticizes the way Frank plays. The way that Bernard speaks to Joan and Frank is duplicated by Walt. His father’s behavior influences how he interacts with his family and how he treats his girlfriend.
The troublesome behaviors that sons, Walt and Frank, exhibit with their parents is also expressed in their struggles at school. The older son Walt claims to have written a Pink Floyd song that he performs at a school talent show and the younger son Frank repeatedly masturbates at school. Throughout the movie, it seems that Walt hates his mom, and conversely that Frank hates his Dad. After Walt is sent to the school physicharist, he realizes that one of his earliest and happiest memories is when his mom brought him the American Museum of Natural History. Together they looked at the giant squid and the whale exhibition. This scene toward the end of the movie gives us a sense of circularity to the story and finally gives us the reason why the movie is titled the way it is.
This movie is funny and smart and overall heartbreaking. Divorce is such a complicated event that affects so many families. There’s no real way for one movie to grasp every aspect of this broad of a topic, but the way Baumbach tells this particular family’s story is stirring. Through the characters dismantling other people’s accomplishments and petty jealousies he shows how self centered people can be. These characters do not bother to understand one another’s struggles because they are so immersed in their own sorrows. Baumbach has made a very special story. Like 2019’s Marriage Story, Baumbach exhibits a sensitivity to the consequences of a marriage breaking apart. Both movies are “divorce” movies, yet both of these stories are so different from one another and prove how the story of a divorce can be told a thousand different ways.
This video analyzes the movie really well, worth the watch viewing the film if you would like further insight.
