There's no easy way to talk about this movie. The easiest comparisons are Allen's
Interiors and Bergman's relationship films, but Baumbach skirts both influences carefully, although even in a charitable frame of mind the decision to name the family the
Berkmans seems a more than just a little precocious. A tiny movie about minor histories, plagiarisms, charlatans and philistines,
The Squid and The Whale deals with the matter of divorce, set in late '80's Park Slope, Brooklyn.
A literary family, the Berkmans have the sort of hangups most overwraught intellectuals just aspire to. Bernard Berkman's fascination with perfection verges on Grand's insistence on a "hats off" salute in
The Plague. Jeff Daniels captures the role of the overweening father figure perfectly, never flinching from a cruel, unsubstantiated judgement or hiding his preening vulnerability. Laura Linney's emotional range as his wife is stunning. Both children manage their pubescent and post angst in ways that I found intriguing and open-ended. Baumbach has succeeded in making a film that celebrates and derides the coming-of-age story without devolving into Solondz' suburbanite drivel or some triumphal Ridley Scott "masterpiece"; the realism is real and the whimsy is not, at least not in the tangible sense of which the characters are aware.
Unlike writing partner/producer Wes Anderson, Baumbach doesn't get caught up in denotative dream time - there's no difficult Christmas or a forgotten birthday to speak of. It's a strangely realistic venture of parent-teacher conferences, tennis lessons and bad dates.
It'll have you singing songs of innocence and experience before you know it.
