The Squid and the Whale Movie Review

The Squid and the Whale is a genuine account of family woe that effectively chronicles the struggles of divorce and the effects it has upon children and adolescents.

In the Park Slope section of Brooklyn circa 1986, 16 year-old Walt and his 12 year-old brother Frank are thrown into a world of anguish when their parents decide to split, citing intellectual differences. The brothers respectively pick opposite sides in the battle, creating animosity among the family. Both parents and children struggle to find their individual and familial identities as they ineffectively cope with the grievous event for the remainder of the film.

Writer/Director Noah Baumbach managed to create an astounding film that almost hits too close to home. The script was brilliantly orchestrated, effectively painting a defined, yet dreary picture of mid-1980's upper-class New York. The characters were adequately developed, deeply refined, and eerily believable. Interestingly the parent and children characters serve dual roles as protagonist and antagonist; concurrently assisting and impeding the progress of one another throughout the film. The dialogue was first-class material, interjected with brilliant and witty social commentary and wry humor distinctive of Baumbach's writing. The plot maintains a steadily active pace throughout, incessantly driving the characters and keeping things interesting.

Although the film is aesthetically stimulating the true driving force is not the visual aspect, but the content of the screenplay. Yet as ingenious as the written page may be, the crowning achievement of the film was the precise casting which brought the narrative to life. Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney do an amazing job portraying not so clean-cut, intellectual parents with differences of opinion. The young actors that play the disturbed adolescents truly turn out astonishing performances of their own, especially with the mature undertones and thematic situations of the film.

Overall The Squid and the Whale is an amazing and thought provoking film with a deep allegorical core which paints a bleak and troubling portrait of the dysfunctional families and broken homes that plague our current society.