Tucked behind a staircase in New York's American Museum of Natural History, a sperm whale and giant squid face off in a still frame of plaster appendages and children' book hues. A beguiling diorama, by way of both majesty and monstrosity, the display is a well-employed allegorical centerpiece for Noah Baumbach's new and semi-autobiographical film, The Squid and The Whale, in which an adolescent boy witnesses another of nature's most ferocious yet mysterious rivalries: divorce.
For protagonist Walt, the announcement of his parent's separation is a line drawn in the sand. His life is now a battlefield, his family suddenly two clans speaking in violent tongues. They seem to make sense only when one takes sides.
Presented by Baumbach as a still impressionable Ahab, Walt navigates the choppy waters of his parental leviathans with younger brother Frank in tow. We cringe and laugh as, amidst the brownstone corridors of a 1986 Brooklyn, the brothers deal with the new war at home, pawns armed with impotent harpoons, crippled by the evaporation of their parents' mythic love. It's appropriate that, as Walt explains to a rent-a-shrink early on in the film, he was never able to look directly at the squid and the whale exhibit as a child. Albeit comforted by his mother, he always covered his eyes. Had he been able to look, he may have realized that, after a few moments, it becomes hard to discern the difference between the creatures' deep-sea death lock and an embrace.
Primarily garnering Walt's sympathy and awe, Jeff Daniels is riveting as Bernard Berkman, the confident but incompetent father. A spitting image of aging schlubbery, Bernard can't resist eyeing the attractive minors he teaches in a dreary high school writing class, his wild beard hanging like the curdled run-off from a festering literary career. He seems capable of fatherhood only through masculine vagaries and an implied intellectual superiority, all of which enchants Walt, much to the dismay of the audience. We cringe when Bernard encourages his son to sleep around rather than go steady with his girlfriend; we tear up when Walt actually follows his advice.
In a key scene, Walt passes off Pink Floyd's "Hey You" as his own creation at the school talent show, punctuating the night by harshly insulting his mother. He is, at that very moment, his father's son, but the event marks him as less of an aspiring rabble-rouser than a tragic marionette. Walt's behavior is painful in its helplessness; the desperate plagiarism and spiteful language with which he acts out are the sole property of his oblivious father.
Walt's little brother, Frank, similarly, (and rather grotesquely) reflects upon the traits of his "preferred" parent. Clinging to his mother and the original family home, Frank shows a tendency toward debauchery, somehow accessing the household liquor and drinking himself silly while miming various sexual acts. All of this takes place right under the nose of his mother, whose adulterous nature provides the obnoxious excuse for her negligence (the film is wisely unclear as to whether her affairs were the cause of marital troubles or in fact their byproduct).
Laura Linney brings a cryptic independence to Joan, her broad eyelids as uncertain as the shingles of a widow's mansion, silently mourning yet flickering at the prospect of a new suitor. Her relationship with the children's tennis coach and fresh success as a novelist add fuel to Bernard's jealousy, while hinting at a woman whose stability and adaptability hang a notch above those of her ex-husband's.
While both adults spin different stories of the divorce's origins, one thing is certain: each excels at narcissistic, clumsy parenting. It is Baumbach's remarkable achievement, however, that through such bleakness of character, Walt's parents seem just as lost as their children, rounded out by a quiet despair that is sympathy's most competent beggar. Composed with a searing frankness and fully realized urgency, Baumbach's incarnations simply exude a believable habitation. Joan and Bernard feel lived in and weathered?not once do they stink of taxidermy, the unfortunate side effect of many a self-reflective work. There is a humble timelessness to this film, one that transcends the familiar theme of children caught in the folklore of their own real-life giants. By lifting Joan and Bernard from hypocrisy and carelessness to a realm of middle-aged purgatory, Baumbach reveals a frightening yet insightful inevitability of the selfishness that permeates parenthood.
As Walt carries out his father's crusade, clawing at any semblance of guilt or redemption, a blossoming relationship with a girlfriend of his own offers a stinging but necessary perspective. More and more, Walt confronts the detriments of rehearsing his father's lovelorn rigor mortis. Little by little, he pulls back the veil on a mother he barely gave a chance. Baumbach lends no viability to the closure of either a possible reconciliation or a final stalemate between his parents. Instead, Walt's future hangs frozen in time, a fitting backdrop for two old plaster creatures, lodged in battle. At the very least, Walt may be persuaded take his hands from his face to look. It could be the first step toward raising the sail, escaping an abyss that, however familiar, will surely swallow him up.