Movie View: On Sincerity, the Family, and Unfeeling Mass | The Squid & the Whale (2005, dir. by N. Baumbach)

Or: "Healing Your Inner Child" as a Sincere Struggle rather than a Justification for Artificial Childishness

The Squid & the Whale is an indie dramedy about a dysfunctional family, a category of American filmmaking so intensely over-saturated that my eyes rolled back into my head merely writing this opening clause. But that generality is not to be avoided: director Noah Baumbach’s coup over this over-trodden ground is not in innovating through new additions, but taking very, very seriously the drama of the dramedy. The closest movie analogue, The Royal Tenenbaums, (2001, directed by Wes Anderson, who is friends with Baumbach and a producer on The Squid & the Whale), is a similarly fast-moving mosaic of sibling squabbles, treacherous infidelity, and enchanting eccentricity; where Baumbach differs is in the direction of the actors: everyone says what they think they mean, regardless of the consequences.

Where most dramedies of this sort derive a majority of their humor from dramatic irony (and since these movies contain, nearly unilaterally, an audience stand-in more aware of the proceedings than most other characters), mining half-heartedly concealed duplicity for the delicious moment when the rascal is finally caught, The Squid & the Whale finds its four main family members only lying to each other when they are simultaneously lying to themselves too. Let me give an example secondary to the central conflict: Walt Berkman (played with extra ick by a young Jesse Eisenberg) plays the Pink Floyd hit “Hey, You” to a talent-show auditorium, all the while claiming it as his own original composition. Ludicrous, right, but the funny thing is that Walt later explains to a school counselor that “it felt like I could have wrote it”: since the song expresses what he feels, Walt feels like he might as well have written it! This sentiment, one where the self-expression of another becomes co-opted, transformed, and utterly replaces your actual self, is the heart of the movie. It is the essence of fraud, of the unmoving mass, and of the spurned lover.

The fraud, as an archetype, looms large over the film: Walt Berkman avoids the reality that he didn’t write “Hey, You” by focusing on his guitar playing; his father Bernard Berkman (a matter-of-fact and neglectful Jeff Daniels) avoids the reality that no one wants to publish his current manuscript by focusing on his accumulated writing pedigree; his ex-wife Joan (the scene-stealing Laura Linney) avoids talking to her children by focusing on post-divorce hook-ups; and poor, little Frank Berkman (an adorable and alcoholic Owen Kline) avoids his disturbingly close maternal and frighteningly distant paternal relationships through drink and masturbation. All four family members are failing to live up to their own expectations of themselves, and this failure and only this failure is what leads them to be less than honest with each other. This is perhaps most true for the acerbic Bernard, who seems to relish the power he throws behind his every word and phrase.

That power inspires the admiration of his son, Walt, who dogmatically sides with his father in family and literary affairs, parroting his dad’s classification of major and minor Fitzgerald without having read the works himself. This lack of ability to self-differentiate, one which identifies nothing but the raw power of a thing rather than how that power may be used by you, is actually the very matter at the heart of The Wall, the Pink Floyd album Eisenberg sings from. The Wall, performed from the perspective of a successful rock star disillusioned with fame, identifies the massive differential between the outpouring of emotion onstage and the placid, empty stillness of the fans. The issue is not the adoration; it’s that, if you truly understood the message, you would know you have to speak it in your own words. Baumbach’s siding on the side of authenticity, rather than simple sincerity, is perhaps what differentiates him most from his ilk. Where others are happy to have a Nico song spell out the true emotions of its characters, Baumbach understands the importance of the meaning coming straight from the mouth of the characters themselves. This pressure underscores the truly remarkable job both he as director and the cast as a whole have done in conjuring not only a time and place, but a specific mood within it.

Perhaps Baumbach had an advantage in tackling that near universal thematic: the family. In The Squid & the Whale, whose title refers to a diorama of the self-same creatures fighting which terrified Walt Berkman as a toddler, the conflict between parents is nearly instantly translated into dysfunction throughout the whole family. Although the kids lack full awareness, they know enough to want more respect, care, and consideration from both of their parents. Accomplishing this want is fraught, however, by the need for self-expression, a medium which both parents have claimed as wholly their own through their writing. As such, what options are left except to parrot back the strength that truly is there, or to become a complete and total philistine, obviating a need for self-expression at all?

What The Squid & the Whale brings for us today (outside of a side-wise illuminating look at the eroticization of American mother-son relationships) is a reminder that the power of the family looms large enough to gum us up entirely, transform us into worse versions of ourselves, or to motivate us to make an Oscar-nominated exegesis that healthcare providers would likely substitute with intensive therapy. Where the oft-vilified parents remain inspiring is in their way with words — the cutting dismissal of Bernard Berkman and the catholicizing confessions of Joan. They are models not in what they say, but how they say it: like assholes, like selfish children, like monsters, like themselves. Far be it from us to say how these people ought to change how they act when we often cannot bring ourselves to muster an “excuse me” even to the stranger encroaching on our personal space.