Not Coming to a Theater Near You

The Squid And The Whale / USA / 2005

I’ll admit to feeling slightly underwhelmed by Baumbach’s debut feature, but that might just be because I was so looking forward to seeing it. It’s well written and beautifully acted, with a terrific sense of location- without doubt the best use of Brooklyn’s redstone streets since Paul Auster and Wayne Wang’s Smoke, with which this shares a certain literary sensibility and a focus on fathers and sons. But this is yet another American indie movie where characters have the occasional tendency to speak and act like they’re in an American indie movie, especially the children- when did pre- pubescent kids become unable to express themselves except through perverted sexuality? I suppose it’s the legacy of The Ice Storm, a much better film than those that followed- the brutal Happiness, and the wildly overrated Me And You And Everyone We Know. The Squid And The Whale lacks the self conscious cringiness of those two films, but the characters’ more extreme aspects do tend to unbalance what is otherwise a nicely judged, hugely likeable family drama.

by Tom Huddleston | Source: DVD
13 Mar 2006 5:20 AM | Comments (8)

Comments / 8 total / Submit Comment

1. leo / 13 March 2006 / 2:30 PM / URL

   Amazingly, this is actually Baumbach’s fourth feature.

2. tom / 14 March 2006 / 4:24 AM / URL

   Okay, my bad. I knew he’d written The Life Aquatic but i missed the others… letting the notcoming side down there, apologies.

3. Chiranjit / 14 March 2006 / 12:03 PM / URL

   What was the display of perverted sexuality? If we are talking about the Frank’s habits at school, I have a feeling this little detail might have been inspired by real life events (the DVD may provide confirmation).

   I also think the only characters that actually speak like they’re in an American indie movie are Walt and Bernard and the film appears to be fairly critical of their faux-intellectualism, since it lacks any substance. This doesn’t appear to be the same as the pretentious dialogue we hear in dozens of other American indie films that is assumed to be normal or a given for the “intelligent” characters. In this case, the artificially academic dialogue is an acknowledgement that these characters are hollow intellects.

4. leo / 14 March 2006 / 12:22 PM / URL

   I was contemplating your first question, too, Jit. But while I think Frank’s pubescent peccadilloes are actually fairly normal for a lad of his age, I still think they are presented here for their squirm-factor. Hence, rightly or wrongly, a representation of the perverse.

   On your second point, I think the film largely maintains a quirkiness of tone that is consistent with other American indies. It helps to note, of course, that Baumbach is one of the originators of this style (and frequently collaborates with another), but it’s characteristic of independent American films nonetheless.

5. tom / 14 March 2006 / 1:26 PM / URL

   Skipping hastily past Leo’s assertion that wiping fresh semen on a public locker is ‘fairly normal’ (or did I just have a deprived childhood?)- my criticism of the way the characters speak to one another has nothing to do with intellectualism, faux or otherwise. I’m English, faux intellectualism comes as naturally to me as breathing. My issue is with the Hal Hartleyisms, the unnatural rhythms, what Leo quite rightly refers to as ‘quirkiness’- a mannered style of speaking and acting that seems to be gradually replacing realism as the stock manner of expression for characters in these sorts of movies. Wes Anderson creates a fantastical world where this seems normal, and it works beautifully. But Baumbach’s film was supposed to be about truth, so the use of this sort of stylised speech and action seems like force of habit, as though he’s so used to characters who behave like this that he’s forgotten it’s not quite real. I enjoyed it a lot, the characters just kept pulling me out of the story and reminding me it was a movie.

6. leo / 14 March 2006 / 2:08 PM / URL

   Ok, if an adult wipes semen on a locker, it’s a felony; if a pubescent child does it, he’s probably just a little confused.

   Not that I am by any means an expert on this.

7. Rumsey / 14 March 2006 / 2:22 PM / URL

   Perv.

8. Chiranjit / 14 March 2006 / 2:42 PM / URL

   I don’t doubt that the idea of semen being spread on a locker is meant to initially cause a certain “ick” reaction, but as Frank’s behavior continues it starts to grow more pathetic than anything else. His roles versus the other gender do appear to be somewhat confused given the chaotic examples displayed by everyone older than him, and I’m not doubting similar (though probably not the exact same) actions occur for children going through family dysfunction, even if I’m not personally familiar with such actions.

   Oddly, I thought the delivery of dialogue was far more natural and relaxed than regular American Indie stuff. Its rhythms are quirky, but very much in a casual way, and I have a feeling that Baumbach may have grown up around such mannered forms of speech considering his parents. It does seem far more apparent around his own family than with outsiders, such as Sophie or Ivan. I think it’s also important that all these characters that put up high-brow appearances around each other are often reduced to low-brow language when they really need to express themselves. The swearing sort of creates a crack in their armor.

   I don’t mind that Wes Anderson dwells in artifice to create a world where this kind of dialogue seems acceptable (actually, Anderson’s dialogue is far more artificial), but I do believe there is a difference between Baumbach in Life Aquatic versus here. It’s not a huge degree of difference, but it’s still important, and whenever it begins to drift into the more stylized in Squid, Baumbach seems to abruptly switch it back to the low-brow in order to point out its false qualities. I found Squid to flow much smoother than any Hartley film I’ve watched, and when the dialogue feels simulated, it seemed to speak more to the inadequacies of specific characters rather than to the film itself. Anyway, just my initial impressions when I watched it around the holidays. I’ll have to catch up with it on DVD.