Saturday, November 26, 2005
Review du Jour: The Squid and the Whale
I watched The Squid and the Whale last night. It is one of those movies that I feel compelled to tell ZS readers/movie buffs to watch, since I think most of you will really enjoy it. The movie tells the bittersweet story (described with no sense of pity or sympathy) of a bohemian Park Slope family (both parents have Ph.D.'s in literature) falling apart. While mum (Laura Linney) is having an affair with a neighbour and then with the tennis coach, dad (Jeff Daniels) is trying to hook up with a 20-year old student of his (Anna Paquin). In the midst of all of this, the two kids are trying to find their way in the real world while also dealing with the craziness around their parents going their separate ways.
I think A.O.Scott says it best when he calls the movie both sharply comical and piercingly sad. The funniest parts IMHO occur when Daniels plays up his New York literati credentials by describing "A Tale of Two Cities" as minor Dickens and calls Frank Kafka "one of my predecessors." In between the cynicism and dark humour, the movie also manages to be warm at the same time, a testament to Noah Baumbach's directing skills.
Interestingly, director Noah Baumbach's parents were the novelist Jonathan Baumbach and the film critic Georgia Brown, so it would be fair to assume some autobiographical elements in the movie. The movie is produced by the incomparable Wes Anderson and has a 94% freshness rating at Rotten Tomatoes. If any of you are wondering, the title is a reference to an exhibit at the Musuem of Natural History in New York. Strongly recommended.
I think A.O.Scott says it best when he calls the movie both sharply comical and piercingly sad. The funniest parts IMHO occur when Daniels plays up his New York literati credentials by describing "A Tale of Two Cities" as minor Dickens and calls Frank Kafka "one of my predecessors." In between the cynicism and dark humour, the movie also manages to be warm at the same time, a testament to Noah Baumbach's directing skills.
Interestingly, director Noah Baumbach's parents were the novelist Jonathan Baumbach and the film critic Georgia Brown, so it would be fair to assume some autobiographical elements in the movie. The movie is produced by the incomparable Wes Anderson and has a 94% freshness rating at Rotten Tomatoes. If any of you are wondering, the title is a reference to an exhibit at the Musuem of Natural History in New York. Strongly recommended.
