414 - The Squid and the Whale, United States, 2005. Dir. Noah Baumbach.

Sunday, February 18, 2018

414 - The Squid and the Whale, United States, 2005.  Dir. Noah Baumbach.

In The Darjeeling Limited I talked a little bit about the difficulty in watching a Wes Anderson film.

http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2018/02/410-darjeeling-limited-united-states.html

Here you have a filmmaker that filmmakers love, that actors love, and that many fans love, because his artistic vision is unique and wonderful and whimsical.  He is precise.  He is rigorous.  He is brilliant.

Yet he keeps a wall around the human heart.

And in the midst of the most painful, heartbreaking moments, the characters retain a closed-off smile.  Having beloved actors perform those tasks only helps.  We know that there is something mournful going on in Bill Murray, and we love him for it.  He does not have to make it explicit.  He can cover the pain with his humor.  We will go along for the ride.  The next generation's Owen Wilson is building a career along similar lines.  With kindness to boot.

But at the end of the day we want to ask the characters of Francis or Peter or Jack, Do you not ever cry?  Do you not ever acknowledge that your parents have hurt you?  That you long for a family?  That you long to be loved?

These questions relate directly to today's movie because Noah Baumbach and Wes Anderson are friends.  And they worked together during this time.  And they had similar childhood experiences, albeit in different parts of the country under different circumstances.

Baumbach co-wrote the script for Anderson's previous film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004).  And they had been reading each other's scripts for a few years.

Now Baumbach comes out with his own movie about divorce.  Also with an ensemble cast of known actors.  But in a very different style.

Wes Anderson filmed their joint script, Life Aquatic, on a $50 million budget.  (Its poor reception drove Darjeeling's budget down to $18 million.)  The Squid and the Whale was made with only a $1.5 million budget.  Which is exceedingly limited for a film with the following stars: Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Jesse Eisenberg, Anna Paquin, and William Baldwin.

So while Wes travels to Italy or India, buys or rents ships and trains, builds cross-sections of ships and trains, and places his camera on a dolly on track, Noah goes to a house, a couple schools, and a few restaurants in Brooklyn and has their shared cinematographer, Robert D. Yeoman shoot handheld in Super 16mm.

The results are tremendous.

It begins with a great script.  A painful script.  A script which Baumbach states he typed with aggressive physicality, taking his anger out in a burst of energy on the keys.

It continues with superb acting.

We already know this is the perfect fare for Laura Linney, who first burst into our consciousness in the similar arthouse gem You Can Count on Me (2000).  Yes, she had already appeared in Lorenzo's Oil (1992), Dave (1993), Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), Congo (1995), Primal Fear (1996), Absolute Power (1997), The Truman Show (1998), and a few others before then, but it was in You Can Count on Me that we saw her profound acting talent in an arthouse setting.  She fits in nicely with big-budget studio films, but in these smaller films her talent really gets to shine.

But then, would you have thought of Jeff Daniels?  Woody Allen did.  He knew nine years before Dumb and Dumber (1994) that Daniels was a terrific actor, when he cast him in the brilliant romantic fantasy The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), and again in Radio Days (1987).  But here he plays the overreaching Bernard Berkman with so many layers of complexity.

Jesse Eisenberg plays older son Walt with tremendous vulnerability.  He is intelligent and unsure and trusting.  He tries things and stumbles and attempts to negotiate his situation to the best of his ability.

Then there is the newcomer Owen Kline, who is fantastic.  A truly natural talent.  We are still waiting for his career to take off, and we want it to really badly.  Owen, we are pulling for you.  You are quite good.  Casting Directors, please go back and follow him.

It is always nice to see William Baldwin working, and we enjoy his character work, and Anna Paquin is a revelation if you still think of her as the little girl in The Piano (1993).  Past time for an update.  OK, you probably know of her as Rogue from the X-Men series.  I am the one who needs an update.

The Squid and the Whale is an actors' movie.

And one that gives you all the heart that The Darjeeling Limited hides.  Which is fine.  They are different movies.  But in this case the pain of being a child of divorce is put out there in the open.

All of the characters have tremendous flaws.  All of them are also likable, or at least sympathetic.  Precisely because we see their vulnerability.  And because Noah Baumbach himself is not judging them.  He is treating them with understanding.

He says, "There's definitely an aspect of revenge in that, in going back and writing about childhood.  Because no matter what kind of childhood you had, you're owning it now in a way that you couldn't then, because you were powerless.  You had to believe all these people had your best interest in mind and they knew what they were talking about, and it's something we all learn and relearn as grown-ups . . . that that wasn't necessarily the case. . . . And it's not even necessarily anyone's fault."

That last sentence is his statement of grace.

It is not even necessarily anyone's fault.

Even though he is getting his revenge and owning it, he is also acknowledging that they too were human.  He is implying that he recognizes they were doing the best they knew how.  And he seems to be forgiving them.

This approach influences the making of this film tremendously.

These people are human.  All too human.  And we see presented before us tremendous emotional pain.

And we care for them.

And desire for them to be healed.