B The Squid and the Whale
Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Jesse Eisenberg, Owen Kline and William Baldwin. Director=Noah Baumbach
Precocious brothers, one high school, one middle school, react to their parents’ divorce. All combinations of this quadrangle are explored in painfully, squirmily funny situations and dialog as everyone manipulates everyone else. Daniels is at his best, an arrogant, effete, and emotionally blind intellectual. Set in 1986, and I wonder if it could have been done post cellphone. A lot of the emotion depends on a social isolation that is gone now. The boys give especially well-acted performances. Tight shots on all the actors make the emotions more intense. All the characters are highly exaggerated, which makes them funny, but turns them into script-vehicles, so it is often difficult to sympathize. There is no plot and nothing new being said narratively or artistically, so in the end it doesn’t add up to anything, but it is an enjoyable romp.
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