Brief Notes On Noah Baumbach’s The Squid And The Whale.

Noah Baumbach’s breakthrough hit, The Squid And The Whale, turned 11 years old this year, and to mark the occasion the film was granted the honour of a release as part of the Criterion Collection. Baumbach’s debut, Kicking And Screaming, and his recent success Frances Ha are both already in the collection, in fantastic editions, and The Squid And The Whale follows suit.

I’ve seen the film, which I consider to be a favourite, countless times in the years between that original theatrical release and the present day, and I still can’t decide how I feel about Jeff Daniel’s patriarchal centre-point of The Squid And The Whale. The comedy is much drier here than in many of the other movies to which Baumbach’s is usually compared, making for a tone that is ultimately very difficult to judge in black and white terms. He’s an asshole, a snob, a phony and a liar, not to mention malicious to boot, with any sensitivity shown seemingly there in order to make a run toward something to gain. And yet there’s a sympathetic undercurrent, of sorts. I think. This confusion and ambiguity make for an apt metaphor for the familial relationship in and of itself, where emotional slights of hand and confusion reign.

The 1986-set movie was shot on 16mm, and the disc ably recreates the look on Blu-ray. The “look” is one of The Squid And The Whale’s greatest assets, with the lively, handheld camerawork (courtesy of master DP Robert Yeoman) giving the picture a real energy. Baumbach’s cinephile credentials are fully on display, with his world of phonies one decorated with posters of films that they’ve likely never seen, while a moment of near-tragedy allows for what is perhaps my favourite reference to Godard’s Breathless (referred to by the original French title, of course, which is duly botched in its pronunciation).

A decade on from initial release, Noah Baumbach’s The Squid And The Whale remains an absolute joy.