CarnivalAskew

"The critics are raving", "A terrific movie"(Time), "Remarkable film" (L.A. Times) "This movie gets under the skin" (Rolling Stone). Well, I won't tell you the opposite. The story is told soon: A New Yorker intellectual family gets divorced, the father, a teacher and bohemian writer, moves out, the two boys stay three days of the week at their mom's (also a writer) and the rest at their dad's.

But it is not that simple, everybody reacts different – the parents accuse and hurt each other, who takes what, does not matter if it is the TV, the cat or the love of their sons. The older one shares opinion and behaviour of his father, that all women are cunts and treads his girlfriend like that; the other, about eleven year old son stands more between all, discusses and swares, secretly drinks lots of alcohol, runs away, etc.

"The squid and the whale" does not tell us new things, but it shows strongly, never boring or one-sided, that the "how" is much more important than the "what" sometimes. Everybody knows the consequences of divorces, but it is rare to see them without stereotypes, but with humanity and bitterly funny. No character is "the good one" or "the bad one", they are all right in their way of looking at the situation, but wrong in the view of the other participants.

It is difficult to add something about a film, that moves everybody, who seen it. What I can tell is, I did not think so much about a film afterwards for a long time, about little details that all show how (and how much) everybody hurts and is hurt in such a situation. "I bought this TV", "Today is my day, not your mothers" "Your mom's lover is a Philistine". It's difficult to say who plays better, the kids or the parents. The dialogues are intelligent, they show the way of thinking of the characters – the parents don't use their intellect, they just tell things that sound intelligent to have a cover, a shield against being hurt, the kids take their parents' methods, but often un-skillfully and un-reflected.
The story is based on the real experience of the director and author of the story, Noah Baumbach, his parents – two writers - got divorced in 1986, so he knows what he is talking about – that no one is the winner, neither the squid nor the whale.