I think I would have enjoyed The Squid and the Whale
more if any of the four main characters had been a decent human being. As it is, I enjoyed Jeff Daniels’
performance, I laughed at the caustic humor, and I stayed interested in
the
story, but it leaves you with an empty feeling to watch a movie and
dislike every
one of the characters you’re supposed to care about.
There’s no pay-off (not that director Noah
Baumbach sets up any with his slapdash ending anyway) to watching a
bunch of
narcissists blithely hurt each other.
Something about the characters and the story felt very John Irving (perhaps from a minor work? okay, that’s funny if you saw the movie). I felt like I’d seen it before, although I can’t think of where. And the ending is a complete cop-out – I very much got the impression that Baumbach didn’t know how to end the story, so he decided to go with one of those artsy, ambiguous endings. Which is fine in its place, but it didn’t fit at all with the style of the movie to that point.
See, here I go being cranky again, when I was
pretty much
enjoying the movie while I was watching it.
The humor is painful but still funny, and I guess it’s a measure
of how
good Daniels is that you thoroughly despise him; it’s no good telling
yourself
he’s just insecure. It wouldn’t be quite
so bad if his older son, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), wasn’t becoming a
clone of his
arrogant, oblivious father. Not that
Walt’s
mother (Laura Linney) is any role model, either, although she’s the one
younger
brother Frank (Owen Kline) chooses to follow. The
very first scene makes the familial allegiances so
clear
that it almost feels gratuitous.
The movie loses its focus a bit, first following Frank, then Walt, as they try to adjust to their parents’ separation and new partners (each parent quickly takes up with a younger, greasier lover – the loathsome Anna Paquin for Daniels and some Baldwin or other, possibly Billy, for Linney). Both parents are so self-absorbed that they can’t see what effect they are having on their sons. I suppose it’s a happy ending when the two boys come to realize that neither parent is deserving of their wholesale commitment.
(The title, by the way, refers to a display in New York’s American Museum of Natural History. I was shocked to learn that a respected museum contains the same sensationalistic battle scene captured in The House on the Rock, though The House on the Rock mysteriously insists on calling its whale a "sea monster.")
Another movie that deals with a writer father who’s distant, solipsistic, and oblivious to his children’s needs is the touching French film Look at Me (Comme une image). Lolita (Marilou Berry) is overweight and feels ugly and worthless, although she is a budding singer. Nothing she does can get her father (Jean-Pierre Bacri) to notice her; when the famous author pays attention to anyone but himself, it’s to his younger daughter, his beautiful wife, or any passing pretty woman. Lolita’s spiral of self-loathing and doomed attempts to please her father is interrupted by her singing coach (writer-director Agnès Jaoui) and a potential boyfriend (Keine Bouhiza). The acting is very good all around, and Lolita’s pain is tangible. The story gets sidetracked a bit by the subplot of Jaoui’s character and her husband, who’s also an author and hoping to get noticed by Lolita’s famous father.
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