All wet.
I had the opportunity to see The Squid and the Whale this week. I was expecting great things. After all, critical buzz about the picture when it was released (in 2005) was good, and the film was nominated for some Golden Globes and and Oscar (for screenwriting).
Either my hopes were too high, or the film just wasn't as good as everyone made it out to be. Here's the skinny: The Squid and the Whale relates the disintegration of the Berkman family, who are living in 1980s Brooklyn. Father Bernard (Jeff Daniels) is a pompous, know-it-all novelist who has begun the downward arc of his career path and is now teaching literature at a college. His wife, Joan (Laura Linney), is the long-suffering mother of their two children. (But not TOO long-suffering. She's had several affairs.) When Bernard and Joan decide to call it quits, they bring children Walt (16) and Frank (12) in for a family conference to break the news. The children naturally find themselves taking sides. The duration of the movie shows how the children and their parents cope with the divorce and their changing lives.
What IS good about the film - all the performances are great, with Daniels in particular fully inhabiting Bernard's academic elitism and utter vanity. Bernard is just always so sure he's right about everything. Plus, he has an angry competitive streak and doesn't seem to want anyone else to win anything except him. (No wonder Joan was boinking other guys, eh?) In addition, the characters are rendered fully on the page, although continuous reinforcements of who they are (rather than who they will become?) become tiresome as the script grinds along.
What I didn't like - The plot isn't particularly compelling. We watch as the family breaks apart and how each member of the family deals with this event in different ways. But because I didn't like most of the characters, I found it difficult to care too much one way or the other. Also, I thought the movie was overly preoccupied with sex. Each character has their own manifestation of a sexual storyline, and that felt very contrived to me. Also, there was alot of language, particularly from the youngest character, that I didn't think was necessary or added much to the story. But mostly, I didn't feel that enough HAPPENED. I didn't feel that the characters made any meaningful inner journeys or underwent any meaningful changes. I just felt like there was alot of extraneous junk in the script that could have been jettisoned in exchange for more of an actual plotline.
So, regardless of the film's critical acclaim, I can't recommend it. If I could get those two hours of my life back, I think I would.
Either my hopes were too high, or the film just wasn't as good as everyone made it out to be. Here's the skinny: The Squid and the Whale relates the disintegration of the Berkman family, who are living in 1980s Brooklyn. Father Bernard (Jeff Daniels) is a pompous, know-it-all novelist who has begun the downward arc of his career path and is now teaching literature at a college. His wife, Joan (Laura Linney), is the long-suffering mother of their two children. (But not TOO long-suffering. She's had several affairs.) When Bernard and Joan decide to call it quits, they bring children Walt (16) and Frank (12) in for a family conference to break the news. The children naturally find themselves taking sides. The duration of the movie shows how the children and their parents cope with the divorce and their changing lives.
What IS good about the film - all the performances are great, with Daniels in particular fully inhabiting Bernard's academic elitism and utter vanity. Bernard is just always so sure he's right about everything. Plus, he has an angry competitive streak and doesn't seem to want anyone else to win anything except him. (No wonder Joan was boinking other guys, eh?) In addition, the characters are rendered fully on the page, although continuous reinforcements of who they are (rather than who they will become?) become tiresome as the script grinds along.
What I didn't like - The plot isn't particularly compelling. We watch as the family breaks apart and how each member of the family deals with this event in different ways. But because I didn't like most of the characters, I found it difficult to care too much one way or the other. Also, I thought the movie was overly preoccupied with sex. Each character has their own manifestation of a sexual storyline, and that felt very contrived to me. Also, there was alot of language, particularly from the youngest character, that I didn't think was necessary or added much to the story. But mostly, I didn't feel that enough HAPPENED. I didn't feel that the characters made any meaningful inner journeys or underwent any meaningful changes. I just felt like there was alot of extraneous junk in the script that could have been jettisoned in exchange for more of an actual plotline.
So, regardless of the film's critical acclaim, I can't recommend it. If I could get those two hours of my life back, I think I would.
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