BIG SCREEN: The Squid and the Whale

Compelling but incomplete

Squid are cephalopods, noticeably different from octopi by two lance-like antennae in addition to their eight tentacles. Whales are marine mammals of the order cetacea, largely subdivided into two categories: those with teeth and those with baleen.

By their very nature, squid and whales are incompatible mates. Outside of cartoons, the two animals do not form symbiotic relationships, fall in love, or create offspring that inherit the maladaptive traits of both parents. Nature has, through a bulwark of finicky genes, kept these two animals from creating mutant progeny.

Strangely enough, neither cuttlefish nor sperm whales make appear in writer/director Noah (screenwriter The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale. Despite the allusions of its title, The Squid and the Whale is not set on the high seas but rather in the postimpressionistic tedium of early ‘80s Manhattan. The film involves a pair of writers and the children they’ve selfishly damaged.

Unlike marine animals, there is no Darwinian red-light when it comes to interhuman coition, and Baumbach would have us believe that “beached whale” Bernard (Jeff Daniels) and his wife, Joan (Laura Linney), are as ill-suited for marriage and child rearing as mammal and mollusk. While Bernard’s career has washed ashore and died, Joan’s late-blooming success is soaring.

Quick to gain recognition for her work, Joan’s unanchored libido and inability to keep her suction cups off other men, partnered with Bernard’s blowhole gazing, jealousy, and the conviction that his novels are still as valuable as ambergris, make for a tumultuous divorce.

Caught in the eye of the storm are Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and Frank (Owen Kline), two minnows too small to be worthy prey for their feuding parents. Walt and Frank’s sexual confusion, masturbatory deviance, and strikes at independence are realistic and engaging, though overshadowed by Bernard and Joan’s brutality. The siblings are awash with confusion and pain, though Bernard and Joan are both too self-absorbed to notice the collateral damage inflicted upon their sons.

Like bastard hybrids of the squid and whale, Walt and Frank embody the worst of their parents. Taking after his father, Frank is crass, negative, and verbally caustic while Walt, longing to be a womanizer, is plagued by his mother’s philandering drive.

Delivered with the same deadpan candor and tongue-in-gill humor as The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Royal Tenenbaums, Baumbach and producer Wes Anderson attempt to stir the audience by understating the characters’ feelings (think Gene Hackman as Royal Tenenbaum). In a trick not dissimilar to the one played on the king in The Emperor’s New Clothes, Baumbach’s antithetical approach conveys emotion by avoiding it. Were it not for the talents of Linney and Daniels, Baumbach’s gambit of “resonance through the absent” would come across as inexperience rather than subtlety.

Daniels portrays Bernard with the aplomb of Rabbit from John Updike’s lagromorphic series. As Bernard the muted narcissist, he delivers a brilliant performance and does so with more authority than Bill Murray who, in The Life Aquatic, played a similar character. Lamentably, Daniels alone cannot reel in the movie and Linney, though perfectly embodying her character, is unable to break through Joan’s truncated representation.

What propels movies such as The Life Aquatic and The Royal Tenenbaums, where monotony and ho-hummery take center stage, is the startling contrast of the confrontational characters to the subdued ones. By casting characters like Klaus (Willem Dafoe) and Chas (Ben Stiller) in The Life Aquatic and The Royal Tenenbaums, respectively, the dullards are augmented by a type of absurdist buffoonery. Unfortunately, the disruptive characters in The Squid and the Whale are so ordinary they do little to offset the rest of the cast’s stifled exuberance, although, to their credit, William Baldwin as Joan’s bedfellow and Anna Paquin as Bernard’s fellatious student make valiant efforts to inspirit the film.

Misogynistic gaucherie, defiling library books, and plagiarizing Pink Floyd’s “Hey You” all make The Squid and the Whale a noteworthy piece of independent cinematography. And yet the episodic nature and lack of closure make for an incomplete voyage. While momentarily great, The Squid and the Whale is captivating for 81 minutes, at which point an abrupt ending leaves you with half a bag of popcorn and the feeling a mischievous theater employee has absconded with the last 15 minutes of the film.


Eric Howerton respects Poseidon’s wrath and can be found above water at erichowerton@mac.com.

A slightly altered form of the above originally appeared in Crosswinds Weekly (www.crosswindsweekly.com), Dec.7-14 issue.