The Squid and the Whale (2005)

Written and directed by Noam Baumbach, and Wes Anderson is one of the producers. It's a filet of a film.

Somehow this is the third time I've watch this film. I find it hilariously funny, and painful, and annoying, and elegant.

The older son, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) -- aka "Chicken" is a poppa's boy and lets his mom know it. He sings and plays Pink Floyd on guitar at a school talent show and tells everyone he wrote the song. Frank (Owen Kline) -- aka "Pickle," wow. The divorce messes him up, and what he does in the film (you'll know when you see it) will never leave your brain.

The father, Bernard (Jeff Daniels) -- are there really English professors like him? I fear there are -- or might have been. The mother, Joan (Lauren Linney), does she have more going for her? Better writer? Why does she end up dating jocks, including Ivan (William Baldwin), Frank's tennis coach?

Neither boy takes the divorce well, but omg Frank. He's drinking beer, looking at porn, swearing, and wiping his stuff in the library and elsewhere around the school... where did he learn such behavior? What is he, like ten? Walt, too, is not normal, by any means. He hangs out with his dad at university, watching Lili (Anna Paquin) with his dad as she's walking down the hallway, sitting like him at home as they watch TV, and saying things the way his dad says them -- including telling his girlfriend Sophie (Halley Feiffer), "Don't be difficult."

Bernard's "fame" as a professor is fading, although he still can use his position to attract female students like Lili. None of what's going on in the family in this movie is healthy or appropriate. How did this dysfunctional family get this way? Where they all born like this? Do they not recognize who they are? Why is Bernard so freakin' pretentious -- and proud of it?

Ultimately, I think maybe only Walt has any sort of "breakthrough," although maybe there's hope for Frank, too, but it's a little less clear with him. With Walt, at least he's realized that he had a good relationship with his mom. He went to the Museum of Natural History with her as a young boy, and the Squid and the Whale exhibit frightened him, but his mom protected him.

Being like his father has cost him his first girlfriend, and he regrets that. He doesn't want to turn into his father, and when his father is hospitalized with either exhaustion or a heart attack, Walt realizes that he's not that close dad, really, and doesn't want to be... when he leaves the hospital room, he tells a nurse that "the man in that room wants to order breakfast." He no longer calls him "Dad," and he runs all the way to the Museum to see the Squid and the Whale by himself. This is the pivotal moment. He is no longer scared?

Rating: 5/5 stars