The Squid and the Whale
Not Actually a Black and White FilmI just got back from the Squid and the Whale. As a teenager I loved Noah Baumbach's first film Kicking and Screaming. I even used a monologue from that film in an audition. While the failure of Noah Baumbach's parents' marriage lingers as a ghost through Kicking and Screaming - the Squid and the Whale focuses on the death rattle of that union.
Watching the divorce of the Baumbachs err, Berkmans is certainly not the stuff of casual entertainment. The emotional distress that sets the children to taking sides in the conflict is frankly painful to watch. The way the divorce provokes Walt to become as snotty and distant as his father while his younger brother, Frank's emotional trauma and neglected life spin into alchohol and sexual anarchy at a frightfully young age.
Fascinatingly the generally progressive journal n+1 strikes a particularly reactionary chord in its analysis of Park Slope's perilous for marriage demographics and social attitudes. It is music to my ears:
People over age 50 are signally absent from Park Slope, Brooklyn. It ’s a neighborhood where members of the “creative class” move during their breeding years to mate, spawn, and keep housepets. The elegant brownstones are spacious and just barely affordable, grocery stores and veterinary clinics abound, the streets remain fairly safe, and a majestic park sits atop the hill. What better place to fall in love and raise a family? But here comes the paradox. No zone – besides perhaps a college dormitory – could be more hostile to monogamy. Or as an ex-girlfriend once put it to me, “I ’v e always thought the point of urban areas is variety.” The density of the Slope ’ s educated, attractive, liberal-minded population translates – for the single person, or the wayward spouse – into a practically limitless array of analogous sexual options within walking distance. The lonesomeness of the uncoupled, or the isolation of marital strife, can be assuaged without difficulty. Someone else will always be thirsty too, and chances are he or she is pretty good-looking, attended a respected college, holds a really interesting job, has an intriguing ethnic background, and there ’s always the thrill of seeing the inside of someone else ’ s apartment. -Christian Loretzen
Very insightful. Though Loretzen finds young Frank's antics to be scenes of "Solondzesque mischief" that tread "perilously close to de rigueur indie transgression". This is completely at odds with my view stated above - but as a side note - just because Todd Solondz made a movie with a young kid smearing semen on things doesn't mean that there is some filmic motif we can ever after describe as "Solondzesque". It's a cheeky reference that the average reader of n+1 might get - but it really is one of the silliest neologisms I've ever encountered.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Culture, Review Monday
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Reader Comments (2)
I can tell you that Baumbach's earlier film, Kicking and Screaming used Chris Eigeman (also from Barcelona) to great effect. Baumbach is definetly influenced by Stillman. BUt I actually prefer Baumbach's visual style in this film - it shows hints of influence from producer Wes Anderson - without ever falling into twee flourishes that only Anderson can (sometimes) get away with.