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DVDs: Scenes from a divorce in Squid and the Whale
By Phoebe Flowers
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Film Writer
Posted March 21 2006
Before The Squid and the Whale, Noah Baumbach directed two well-received movies, Kicking and Screaming (1995) and Mr. Jealousy (1997). But last year's brilliant, semi-autobiographical tale of a literary family suffering through divorce in 1986 Brooklyn has the feel of a first film, in all the right ways.
Baumbach spent four years nailing down financing for his bittersweet third project, which tells the tale of Bernard (Jeff Daniels, in a Golden Globe-nominated role) and Joan (Laura Linney, who stuck with the movie for all the years of preproduction), writers on the verge of a breakup after nearly two decades of marriage. Suffering the fallout are their two sons, insecure teenage Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and disaffected 12-year-old Frank (Owen Kline).
Baumbach himself was 14 when his parents, novelist Jonathan Baumbach and former Village Voice film critic Georgia Brown, split in 1984, and he grew up in the same neighborhood where the film was shot (sometimes without permits due to lack of funds and time). Fittingly, his real younger brother, Nico Baumbach, shot the 10-minute behind-the-scenes featurette that is lacking only in length.
In it, Linney and Daniels talk passionately about their characters on location after the sun has set ("We're all here for the script," Daniels says). Iconic filmmaker Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums), with whom Baumbach collaborated on the script for The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and who has a producer credit on Squid, pops up in the background of filming a few key scenes. And Owen Kline, who Baumbach seems to go out of his way to neglect to mention is the son of actors Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates, expresses how equally charming and precocious he is off-camera. (All the filmmaker will throw you is an occasional "his mom, Phoebe," and "my wife, Jennifer," meaning Jennifer Jason Leigh, a friend of Cates' since they made Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It's a calculated modesty that would be annoying in a less talented director.)
Baumbach declined, he says, to do a traditional commentary, because "if I really had any more to say about the movie, it would have been in the movie." (Unsurprisingly, then, there are no deleted scenes on the disc.) Instead, he talks for just under an hour over a series of stills, which, again, might be annoying if Baumbach hadn't made such a fine film.
Watching and listening to the director discuss his work, it quickly becomes apparent that Baumbach is far too articulate and -- we'll just say it -- attractive to be working behind the camera. But when you consider his ability to make a movie so sharply funny and sad all at once, so relatable to myriad generations, thank God he is.
Phoebe Flowers can be reached at pflowers@sun-sentinel.
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