Squid and the Whale

After waiting, waiting, waiting, then throwing in the towel, giving up and saying "fuck it, I'll wait til March for the DVD" a miracle happened - my local theatre monopoly finally brought in The Squid and the Whale.

The movie is essentially the story of a marital dissolution. Director Baumbach has already worked his way through this - sort of, barely, or at least touched the surface of it - in Kicking and Screaming, a film I have fawned over in this very blog. Jesse Eisenberg's character, Walt, is a younger Grover - young, vaguely disillusioned and completely unsure of anything but the homeostasis. Now, this is probably because both Grover (the protagonist of Kicking and Screaming) and Walt are partially based on Noah Baumbach himself.

The movie isn't as funny as Kicking and Screaming or Mr. Jealousy. It's claustrophobic as all hell. In Kicking, Olivia D'Abo's character, Jane, talks about how Grover and his friends never talk about the heavier topics in life, that they waste hours obsessing about cartoons. Finally, Baumbach gives his sort of "answer" to that, finally, in his own way, breaching the real core of what, to this point, has fueled his work, even including The Life Aquatic.