| | | A Film by Noah Baumbach.
Features: DVD, Widescreen, Aspect Ratio 1.85:1, Dolby Digital (5.1), English, Subtitled, French Dubbed & Subtitled
Based on the true childhood experiences of director Noah Baumbach, The Squid and the Whale tells the story of a patriarch (Jeff Daniels, Dumb & Dumber, Speed) of an eccentric Brooklyn family who once had been a great novelist, but has settled into a teaching job. When his wife (Laura Linney, Exorcism of Emily Rose, Kinsey) discovers a writing talent of her own, jealousy divides the family, leaving two teenage sons to forge new relationships with their parents. Linney's character begins dating her younger son's tennis coach (William Baldwin, Backdraft, Flatliners). Meanwhile, Daniels' character has an affair with the student (Anna Paquin, X-Men, Almost Famous) his older son is pursuing.
"A remarkable film! Incisive, heartfelt and painfully funny..." Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times
Editor's Note
Noah Baumbach's THE SQUID AND THE WHALE is an excruciatingly humane, often hilarious portrait of a disintegrating family in mid-1980s Brooklyn. Set in the stately yet off-kilter neighborhood of Park Slope, the film tells the story of the Berkmans, a quintessentially New York family struggling to keep things together. Family patriarch Bernard (Jeff Daniels) is a published author and writing teacher whose insecurity over his own lack of recognition continues to plague him. Meanwhile, his wife, Joan (Laura Linney), is grappling with her own sense of unsettlement. Their sons, who are caught in the crossfire, express their confusion in different ways: 16-year-old Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) tries to pass off Pink Floyd's "Hey You" as his own hit in the school talent show, while his 12-year-old brother Frank (Owen Kline) begins to explore his burgeoning sexuality and alcoholism. When Bernard and Joan finally decide to separate, the family must confront their unraveling situation head on.Rarely has family dysfunction been captured so frankly and honestly as in THE SQUID AND THE WHALE. Baumbach claims his film is only semi-autobiographical, but, from the pitch-perfect writing and nostalgic tone, it feels as if we're watching home videos of the writer-director's past. Featuring an outstanding pop-music soundtrack (Bert Jansch, the Feelies, Lou Reed), the film also boasts performances that seem certain to earn end-of-the-year accolades.
| Features | Widescreen Presentation | | Audio: English Dolby Digital (5.1) | | Subtitles: English, Spanish |
| Technical Info
|
Release Information
| | Studio: Sony Pictures |
| Release Date: 1/22/2008 |
| Running Time: 81 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2005 | | Catalog ID: 13494 | | UPC: 00043396134942 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English [CC], English, French Dubbed | | Available Subtitles: French | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Anamorphic Widescreen 1.85:1 |
| Cast & Crew | Anna Paquin | | Jeff Daniels | | Laura Linney | | William Baldwin | | Britta Phillips - Original Music By | | Bryan Adams - Original Music By | | Dean Wareham - Original Music By | | Miranda Bailey - Executive Producer | | Noah Baumbach - Director | | Noah Baumbach - Writer | | Reverge Anselmo - Executive Producer | | Robert D. Yeoman - Cinematographer | | Tim Streeto - Editor |
| Awards |
Nominee (2006) | | | Golden Globe, Noah Baumbach, Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy | | | Golden Globe, Jeff Daniels, Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy | | | Golden Globe, Laura Linney, Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy | | | Independent Spirit, Noah Baumbach, Best Director | | | Independent Spirit, Wes Anderson, Peter Newman, Charlie Corwin, Clara Markowicz, Best Feature | | | Independent Spirit, Laura Linney, Best Female Lead | | | Independent Spirit, Jeff Daniels, Best Male Lead | | | Independent Spirit, Noah Baumbach, Best Screenplay | | | Oscar, Noah Baumbach, Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen | |
Winner (2005) | | | Sundance Film Festival, Noah Baumbach, Director's Award, Dramatic | | | Sundance Film Festival, Noah Baumbach, Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award | |
Nominee (2005) | | | Sundance Film Festival, Noah Baumbach, Grand Jury Prize |
|
| | Professional Reviews | Premiere
"Baumbach has crafted this tale out of real love....[He] tells the story with great fluidity....It's a breakthrough work and one of the year's most powerful pictures." 10/01/2005 p.50-53New York Times
"[B]oth sharply comical and piercingly sad....The film's tableau of domestic absurdity is likely to tickle, and also to lacerate, anyone who has either raised a child or been one." 10/05/2005 p.E1 Rolling Stone
3.5 stars out of 5 -- "All the performances are flawless....Without jerking tears or reducing the acid content of his wit, Baumbach's humane movie gets under your skin." 10/20/2005 p.90-91 Film Comment
"Filled with a tremendous compassion for his young protagonists, Baumbach has created a profoundly moving story of boys to men." 09/01/2005 p.72 USA Today
"[I]t is poignant and focused on familial struggle....The young actors' performances are particularly haunting." 10/14/2005 p.4E Los Angeles Times
"[A] painfully funny, semiautobiographical coming-of-age story....Baumbach is exceptionally attuned to the indignities of the situation, and what makes his movie as funny as it is sad is that its brutal honesty emanates from a deep well of empathy and understanding." 10/16/2005 p.E6 Entertainment Weekly
"THE SQUID AND THE WHALE becomes its own realistic display of family entropy, as cautionary as it is educational." -- Grade: A- 10/21/2005 p.125 Sight and Sound
"The evocation of the period is note-perfect, with a choice of original music likely to trigger jolts of recognition in viewers..." 03/01/2006 p.46-78 Movieline's Hollywood Life
"Never maudlin or overly precious, this comedy/drama is sharp, smart and short." 03/01/2006 p.107 Uncut
5 stars out of 5 -- "[T]his charming film swims a complex channel between comedy and melodrama....A great white middle-class film. A truly great one." 05/01/2006 p.145 Ultimate DVD
3 stars out of 5 -- "[A] quirky take on familial breakdown....The performances are excellent." 08/01/2006 p.111 Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "SQUID gets its strength from daring to face messy reality head-on." 09/01/2006 p.102 Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
I don't know what I'm supposed to feel during "The Squid and the Whale." Sympathy, I suppose, for two bright boys whose parents are getting a messy divorce. Both parents are writers and use words as weapons; the boys choose sides and join the war. In theory I observe their errors and sadness and think, there but for the grace of God go I. In practice, I feel envy. I would have loved to have two writers as parents, and grow up in a bohemian family in Brooklyn, and hear dinner-table conversation about Dickens. These kids have it great. Their traumas will inspire them someday. Hell, the movie was written and directed by Noah Baumbach, whose parents were writers (the novelist Jonathan Baumbach, the film critic Georgia Brown), and look how he turned out. By the time he was 26 he had already directed "Kicking and Screaming" (1995), about sardonic and literate college graduates whose only ambition was to remain on campus. I felt the same way. Left to my own devices, I would still be a student of English literature, entering my 44th year as an undergraduate. In the movie the parents, Bernard and Joan Berkman, are played by Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney, and if that's who it takes to play your parents, what are you complaining about? The movie centers on their troubled sons. Joan has been having an affair for four years, their father is moving out, and in theory their divorcing parents will share custody (there is even a plan for time shares of the cat). In practice, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), who is 16, moves in with his father, and Frank (Owen Kline), who is about 10, stays in the family home with his mother. Both kids have issues with their parents' sexuality. Walt thinks his mother is a "whore" for bringing one of her lovers into their home, but then his father begins an affair with one of his students, and what does that make him? Walt falls into true adolescent love, but is compelled to deny it to himself, because his father urges him to play the field, and he values his father's opinions more than is wise. "You have too many freckles," he tells Sophie (Halley Feiffer), the girl he likes. I guess he thinks that shows he has high standards. He's so dumb he doesn't know how wonderful too many freckles are. Frank, his younger brother, has meanwhile discovered masturbation, and taken to distributing his semen here and there around his school -- on library books, for example. This is an alarming breach of school decorum, and leads to a parent-teacher-student conference, during which I kept hoping someone would quote Rodney Dangerfield: "When I was a kid we were so poor, if I hadn't been a boy I wouldn't have had anything to play with." Bernard, the father, published a good novel some years earlier and is now in a protracted drought season. It doesn't help when his wife sells a story to The New Yorker. He is played by Daniels as a man with wise-guy literary opinions, which his son remembers and repeats; Bernard says A Tale of Two Cities is "minor Dickens," w - Roger Ebert
|
| |
|
|
|
