Match Point

Match Point is not a typical Woody Allen film. For this movie, Allen has ditched his native New York for glitzy London, abandoned his beloved jazz for high brow opera and left his usual comedy style behind for a Hitchcock inspired suspense thriller. With his years of experience in filmmaking, Allen makes all the transitions seem so easy.

Match Point is a movie about passion, temptation and obsession, but above all, it is about luck. Two main characters Chris (played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and Nola (played by Scarlett Johansson) are both opportunists. They start at the same place, but end up at the opposite sides of luck. Nola is a struggling American actress, engaged to Tom Hewett from a wealthy London family. By teaching Tom tennis, Chris and Tom become friends and he is introduced to both Nola and Tom’s sister, Chloe (played by Emily Mortimer). From the beginning, there is a strong physical attraction between Chris and Nola, but while they toy with each other, their main aim is the Hewett fortune. In the end, one is welcomed into the family and has a meteoric rise in society while the other is rejected and lives a tragic life.

Allen’s comedies have always been famous for their witty dialogue. Although Match Point is a dark drama, his dialogue is still superb and dominates the movie. It is ironic when we hear Tom and Chloe dismiss the role luck plays in people’s successes since they are clearly the benefactors of luck to be born into a rich family. Allen does not waste any conversations in this movie and some of the small talks in the first half of the movie play a pivotal role in the second half. The movie makes a sinister turn half way through and plays out more like Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder. I have to admit that Allen is no less a master than Hitchcock in creating suspense and I had no idea where his story was leading to while watching it.

Woody Allen being Woody Allen, he cannot help putting some of his personal touches in this movie. Allen has always been fascinated by Dostoyevsky’s book Crime and Punishment and I don’t think it is a coincidence for Chris to be reading this specific book in his spare time. Sometimes this entire movie feels like Allen’s attempt at a modern day Crime and Punishment. The movie is also not completely void of Allen’s sense of humor, especially when those bumbling London detectives try to solve the murder case near the end of the movie. However it is kind of tacky when Allen uses the ghosts to question the murderer’s moral ground. It is a good speech about the seductiveness of money and power and how easily one can become ruthless in pursuit of both, but I only wish that Allen could have invented some better scenarios for the monologue.

The movie’s British cast is not up to par with Allen’s usual New York cronies. Rhys-Meyers is way too young and inexperienced to handle a complicated character such as Chris. He is so obvious as a gold digger and social climber that it is hard to believe Chloe’s parents do not see through him. He walks with a swagger in the movie that he may have hoped to add maturity to his character, but it only makes him look even more childish. Ever since Allen parted ways with Mia Farrow in 1992, he has been looking for a constant muse in his movies. It seems that he has found one in Johansson. This top heavy beauty has been the talk of the town ever since Lost in Translation. Her pouty lips have replaced Angelina Jolie’s voluptuous ones as the most demanded by plastic surgery patients. She may be the current It girl in Hollywood, but I have always found her performances cold on screen. Working with a cineaste like Allen, she has finally incorporated her coldness into a character that is icy from time to time. Still Johansson is not a femme fatale in the same breadth as all of Hitchcock’s favorite blondes such as Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly; on the other hand, I wish that Allen could have made Mortimer’s Chloe a meatier role. Mortimer is a talented actress who has been trapped in all the cute and sweet roles. Anyone who has seen her in Lovely & Amazing knows there is much more to this actress than meets the eye.

I hope this movie is not the beginning of Allen’s self-imposed exile into European film community. Allen has been shunned by the American audience ever since his affair with Farrow and her adopted daughter Soon Yi became public in 1992. His movies after 1992 have been consistently good, but none of them can be called a masterpiece. To me, the reason that the public has stayed away from his movie is because Woody Allen’s movies in the past all closely related to his personal experience and it is hard to draw the line between his life and the fictional life on screen, but that is also why his old movies are so great. But after the scandal, Allen has been making movies as an outsider and his movies are his observations and musings on our society. He has ceased to be a participant in the stories even when he stars in those movies. I would love for Allen to come back to his homeland and open his heart to his audience once more.

The Constant Gardener (on DVD)

The Constant Gardener is no match for director Fernando Meirelles’ masterpiece, City of God, but Meirelles does bring some freshness and one or two of his trademark styles to a formulaic Hollywood picture.

The movie mainly takes place in Africa and revolves around a British diplomat Justin Quayle (played by Ralph Fiennes)’s quest in finding who killed his wife, Tessa (played by Rachel Weisz). Along the way, Justin discovers British government and pharmaceutical industry’s sinister dealings in Africa and his ever deeper love for his now deceased wife. The Constant Gardener is too preachy in its political messages, too predictable in its plots and too unconvincing in its love story. Maybe because I have read many reviews about the movie’s surprising ending, I kept hoping something unexpected would happen the whole time I was watching it, but in the end everything turns out to be what I have suspected from the beginning. The love story between Justin and Tessa is quite thin for most of the movie. They are an odd couple and pretty much live their separate lives until Tessa’s death prompts Justin into activism. It is hard to see what attracts these two people other than their appearances.

Fiennes and Weisz are good, but not great in this movie. By choosing to act in movies with more substance, Fiennes has become a Tom Cruise for grown up women. His Justin is meek and passive during the first half of the movie, but in the second half he shows that ordinary people are capable of extraordinary deeds under unusual circumstances, and Fiennes manages the transition well. I have to applaud screenwriter Jeffrey Caine for not turning Justin into some kind of superhero like so many action thrillers do these days and even though the ending may not be surprising, it is believable and non-conforming to traditional Hollywood endings. (Of course, all the credits may have to go to John Le Carre, whose book the movie is based on. I have not read this book or any of Le Carre’s books, so I cannot assess how truthfully the movie has followed the book.) The movie has some of the most beautifully shot female nude scenes in recent movie history. Weisz is a lovely actress and her comfort and confidence with her body helps to add a touch of innocence to those scenes. Unfortunately, her Tessa is written too much as a saint and martyr for me to feel connected with her on screen. The most memorable performance for me is Bill Nighy’s bureaucrat, Sir Bernard Pellegrin. He has always been a versatile actor and in this movie he captures Pellegrin’s British stuffiness and aristocratic snobbishness to the bone.

Apart from an unimpressive story, the movie is a cinematic marvel for the eyes. Meirelles treats his movies like artwork and every frame in The Constant Gardener looks like a picture composition. The movie opens with Justin saying goodbye to Tessa in the airport. They are completely against the light and in the shadow. As Tessa and his friend walk toward their airplane, they start walking into sunlight, but Meirelles gradually puts them out of focus and leaves only Justin in the front and center watching them leave as if watching an oil painting. There are many such artistic moments in this movie. Meirelles also uses lighting to show different moods in the movie. He infuses all the flashbacks of Justin and Tessa with bright and somewhat dreamy light to reflect their happiness and out-of-this-world love towards each other. After Tessa’s death, when Justin roams around in his house and visits their old haunts, Meirelles casts a dark shadow over everything to go along with Justin’s somber mood and the scenes look like they were shot in black and white with just a taint of color.

I am glad that Meirelles shot the movie on location in Africa instead of some look-alike place. Africa and its people play an important role in this movie. The continent’s beauty, openness and barrenness, along with the warmth of its people and the plight they are in, are the heart and soul of The Constant Gardener. As shown in City of God, Meirelles clearly feels affinity to people of developing countries who have to struggle every day simply to survive. With the same technique he adopted in City of God, he uses a hand held camera to add a documentary feel to all the African scenes in the movie. His Africa provokes the same emotion his Rio slum did in City of God: real, desperate and moving.

The end of the movie echoes what Nick Nolte said to Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda. In explaining why the world will not intervene in the genocide in Rwanda, Nolte has a memorable line, “You’re not even a n_____. You’re an African.” It has been too long for us to close our eyes and cover our ears to shut off all the suffering and misery in Africa and despite the fact that The Constant Gardener is not a powerful movie, it does make us see and hear for at least two hours how lucky we are and how each of us may be able to change the world by helping one person at a time.

Bad Santa (on DVD)

2003’s Bad Santa may have been ahead of its time. With 2005 being the year for R-rated comedies, Bad Santa probably could have done more business at the box office if it had ridden the coattails of Wedding Crashers and The 40 Year Old Virgin; on the other hand, Americans may never be ready to connect Christmas with profanity and lewd behavior. If you are in the mood for an irreverent comedy and have no little kids running around, Bad Santa may be just the right entertainment for you. The movie centers on a pair of crooks who dress up as Santa and his little helper to rob malls during Christmastime. When an overweight troubled kid and a suspicious security chief unexpectedly enter the picture, it causes a humorous chain of events to follow. The story is the weak point of this movie. The relationship between Willie (aka Bad Santa, played by Billy Bob Thornton) and the Kid is stale and corny. Director Terry Zwigoff’s use of a fat kid and a midget Santa’s helper only generates some cheap laugh. The movie’s ending is also too pat to be convincing. I wish Zwigoff had the guts to end the movie in a character-appropriate downer. However this movie is good at portraying the central character and Thornton’s performance transforms the picture. Thornton is a great comic actor still waiting to be recognized by the American public. His deadpan face is perfect for suicidal and alcohol numbed Willie. He is terrific at delivering curse words and has plenty of opportunities to say them in this movie. His Willie is unbelievably sad and hysterically funny at the same time. The movie also features Lauren Graham in a role that will shock all her Gilmore Girls fans, and has a last onscreen role for always funny John Ritter. Besides a few enjoyable performances and a well-written lead character, Zwigoff cleverly mixes classic music in the background for a movie about a classless guy and it results in some uproarious moments for the audience.

Walk the Line

Walk the Line is no Capote, and Joaquin Phoenix is no Philip Seymour Hoffman. In many ways, Walk the Line feels like 2004 hit Ray retold about a white singer in a much less masterful way. It is a biography movie done by the books without any originality and creativity.

Any one interested in seeing American music icon Johnny Cash’s lifetime story will be disappointed to find that director James Mangold has attempted to fit Walk the Line into both biopic and romance genres and instead failed to achieve some satisfaction in either category. The movie focuses on the love story between Cash (played by Phoenix) and June Carter (played by Reese Witherspoon) and ends when Carter finally accepted his marriage proposal (I guess Garth Brooks is not that original), hence completely skips the last 35 years of Cash’s amazing career. It is a major sin of omission when telling a story of a larger-than-life character like Cash. Cash and Carter may be each other’s soul mates, but it is hard to feel sympathetic watching Cash constantly pine for Carter while his wife toils at home. Rather than delving into complexity of human love like in Brokeback Mountain and The Squid and the Whale, Mangold tries too hard to justify Cash and Carter’s relationship by painting Cash’s first wife Vivian as a typical shallow, one dimensional show business wife who complains about her husband’s absence but enjoys all the material benefits. Cash and Carter’s affair is simply too predictable and down pat, and frankly, quite boring to watch.

Phoenix and Witherspoon both give decent but not stellar performances in this movie. Phoenix is good at portraying tortured souls, but he does not make the tortured soul Johnny Cash-specific in this movie. It is good to see Witherspoon in a drama after so many comedies and to hear her use her Southern root (she was born in Louisiana and grew up in Tennessee) for that sweet twang in Carter’s voice. Before seeing the movie, I had some reservation about all the actors sing all the songs in this movie. A big part of any biopic on musicians is the music. While the musicians may not be able to play themselves on screen, they could at least permeate the movie with their voices. However, while watching Walk the Line, Phoenix and Witherspoon’s musical performances are actually the most delightful parts of the movie. When they perform on stage, they bring Cash and Carter alive and turn themselves into the characters. Singing the songs themselves has also become a tool for Phoenix and Witherspoon to put any of Cash and Carter’s emotional nuances that they experience at the time into the songs. The music has become surprisingly more powerful than just using pieces of some original recordings.

Even though Sam Phillips and his Sun Records have only a small role in this movie, I cannot help admiring this guy’s genius. His small independent label has revolutionized American music forever by signing those future legends such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Carl Perkins. I also envy those music lovers growing up in the 50s. The movie shows Cash’s first tour and what an amazing bill that tour had. Fans of the time got to see Presley gyrate his hips, Lewis improvise on his piano, Cash grip his guitar on the side and Orbison experiment with his early sound. Current music industry needs a visionary like Sam Phillips to imbue some new elements into today’s rock and roll.

Since the movie mainly covers Cash’s career of first 13 years (1955-1968), it does not include some important music he has recorded later. I was frustrated when A Boy Named Sue did not get played at all. It is a song that showcases Cash not only as a musician but also as a storyteller. It is a song with so much social conscience that together with Presley’s In the Ghetto have always been my all time favorites from these two music giants. A Cash bio without the song feels so incomplete.

I have never read any of Cash and Ray Charles’ autobiographies, but based on the two movies, I am astonished to find so many parallels in their lives: they both lost a beloved brother at an early age and the loss had profound impacts on their future lives; they both used to be drug addicts and had to kick their habits cold turkey; they were also both deeply religious sinners who cheated on their wives. In fact, sometimes during the viewing, I feel Mangold has been deliberately copying Ray’s path. Mangold apparently hasn’t learned rule #1 in making a good movie: being fresh.

The title of this movie is quite puzzling for me. It seems no brainer that a biopic of Johnny Cash should be named after his famous moniker, Man in Black. If the movie is really a love story about Cash and Carter, the more appropriate song seems to be Ring of Fire. It was written by Carter, supposedly about Cash and their feelings toward each other. I Walk the Line was a song recorded in 1955 and is long rumored to be about Cash staying faithful to his then wife Vivian while touring on the road. By using a song Cash sang for his first wife as the title, the movie makes Cash and Carter’s passion for each other even more squeamish.

In the end, Walk the Line may be best viewed by all celebrities who like to claim they want to date or marry people outside the business. They probably would do everybody a favor by staying inside the business.

The 40 Year Old Virgin

Finally, there is a comedy for grown-ups and it is FUNNY. That comedy is The 40 Year Old Virgin. Critics have called 2005 the year of R-rated comedies, but I have had so many misses with comedies in the past that I had doubts about this movie even seconds before it started. To my relief, this movie is everything that it is hyped to be: hilarious, sweet and touching.

Writer/director, Judd Apatow, along with writer/star, Steve Carell, have created a character that no other writer has touched on before and found plenty of humor in this small niche character – a 40 year old male virgin. As Andy the virgin (played by Steve Carell) is set up by his male friends in pursuit of losing his virginity, he finds true love and everlasting friendships along the way.

The reason this no-big-name comedy can generate such box office and critical buzz lies in its likable but flawed everyday characters that the audience can easily identify with. Andy is a common guy with an uncommon secret – he has never had a home run in the sexual front. There is really nothing wrong about him except that he collects action figures including the Six Million Dollar Man’s boss, watches Survivor religiously and, one more thing, rides a bike instead of driving a car (actually, he doesn’t even know how to drive a car at the beginning of the movie). However, underneath his nerdy appearance and quirky habits, Andy is also a man with a child’s sensitivity and, pardon my clichés, a heart of gold. Steve Carell looks like he was born to play Andy. He so flawlessly captures Andy’s shyness around women, awkwardness with guy talks and boyish joy about his toy figures and reality shows that it is a wonder he had not created this character sooner. Carell even sacrificed his real chest hair in the outrageously funny wax scene that has resulted in realistic performances from him and his costars and plenty of laughter from the audience.

This movie is not only about Andy’s sexual initiation and his relationship with single mother/grandmother, Trish, but also very much a buddy film. Andy’s friendship with his coworkers is actually the main source of laughing materials in this movie, especially since Jay (played by Romany Malco), David (played by Paul Rudd) and Cal (played by Seth Rogen) are three “endearing” types of men in our society: the cheater, the stalker and the pervert, respectively. Apatow and Carell frequently use the banters among the guys to both reflect and poke fun at macho men’s view of everything in our society. One good example is the scene in which David and Cal play video games while trash talking about each other with “you are so gay because….” It is so irreverent and thigh slappingly funny. Even though the three friends are male chauvinist lowlifes at times, they are not without any redeeming qualities. They are extremely loyal to their friends and extremely pathetic when dumped by their girlfriends. In the end, Andy’s innocence and decency more or less rub off on those three characters. The three actors who play the three friends all have terrific comic timing and Paul Rudd may be the most recognizable face of the three simply because he has been in this business much longer than the other two. Rudd could have easily become a conventional movie star by playing in big studio productions, but he has always chosen to play smaller roles which allow him to widen his range. Like Peter Sarsgaard, he seems to forever wear a barely visible cynical grin on his face and is capable of delivering the funniest line with a frown.

The movie also stars one of the most underused actresses of our times – Catherine Keener as Andy’s love interest, Trish. I wish more filmmakers would write strong female roles for actresses like Keener. With botox and dieting all the rage among Hollywood actresses, Keener is a breath of fresh air. The little lines on her face add richness to whatever story she is in and make whatever character she plays that much more believable. I always enjoy seeing a trace of her unique sassiness in her characters and wish I could catch it by simply watching her performances.

If you are, like me, an addict to “cheesy” soft rock of the 80s, then this movie soundtrack is a must-own for you. It has Lionel Richie’s Hello, Asia’s Heat of the Moment, and of course, what else for an avid action figure collector but the theme song of The Greatest American Hero, Believe it or Not. Yes, you better believe it. At the end of the movie, there is a There’s Something About Mary-esq song and dance number. Once Andy is virgin no more, he breaks into The 5^th Dimension’s Aquarius and soon the whole cast joins in the fun. To tell the truth, my feet started tapping at the same time.

The 40 Year Old Virgin may not revive Michael McDonald’s career, but it sure will make Steve Carell a bright comedy star.

King Kong

I have never seen the original 1933 King Kong, and dozed through the 1976 remake shown on TV; however, with King Kong deeply imbedded into our pop culture, it is impossible for me to be completely ignorant about him. Peter Jackson’s King Kong is my first cinematic ride with this giant ape and it leaves me exhilarated at times and yawning at others.

Clocking in at a little over 3 hours, this King Kong is the epic of 2005. Director Peter Jackson is no stranger to epics. He accomplished the impossible before by turning all three The Lord of the Rings movies into both box office and critical successes and finally winning the Oscar for the last installment in the Rings trilogy. In King Kong, once again he proves that he is capable of turning an ambitious project into a reality.

Peter Jackson sets his remake in the same time period as in the original because he believes the Depression era is important to the story. It follows a zealous director, Carl Denham (played by Jack Black)’s nature pursuit to Skull Island and records all the adventures both the movie and ship crew experience on that unknown island. Once Carl captures Kong, he brings it back to New York with chaotic consequences.

The movie is a CGI extravaganza and has some fantastic computer generated action sequences. Jackson and his team have been pushing the technology envelope with every epic they make, but the movie also seems to pay homage to other directors with visions. When the ship hit Skull Island, it reminds me of the moment Titanic hit the iceberg; when the crew tries to escape from dinosaurs, Jurassic Park jumps into my mind.

The movie boasts an international cast, but most of them pale besides CGI King Kong. Thanks to actor Andy Serkis and special effects, Kong has become a beast with a wide range of emotions. I love his playfulness with Ann Darrow, his tantrum when told no, his fierceness when faced with danger and his undying devotion to love. Kong is a far richer character than majority of roles out there nowadays.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for all the human characters in this movie. When it comes to tell human stories, the script falls short. Most human characters are one dimensional and the dialogue is full of clichés. Despite a script that does not give actors much room to develop, three performances stand out. Naomi Watts is perfectly cast as damsel in distress Ann Darrow. Her sea blue eyes and wavy blond hair are so photogenic that we as audience can understand Kong’s lust for her. Jackson’s occasional use of soft focus on Watts also adds a goddess aura to her appearance. When Denham first catches glimpse of Darrow in front of the burlesque hall and later when Kong sees her in a white dress on the New York street, she represents all that is pure and innocent and is an epitome of human beauty. But as in Mulholland Dr. and 21 Grams, Watts proves she is not just a beautiful starlet. She has a face able to express a thousand emotions without uttering a word and a rare ability of delivering even bad dialogue in believable fashion. Without all her wonderful reaction shots, Kong would have felt much less real to the audience. Another solid performance belongs to Thomas Kretschmann who plays the skipper in the movie. This German actor first caught American moviegoers’ eyes with his portrayal of a sympathetic Nazi officer in The Pianist. In King Kong, using his movie star look and confidence, he has gone on to show that he is clearly a leading man material. The most surprising performance in the movie has to be Jack Black. When I first heard that he was cast as Carl Denham, I thought it was a terrible miscast. How he proves me wrong! With that trademark craziness shining in his eyes, he is the mad man, Denham, with a single purpose in life – make the most out-of-this-world movie. His Denham is loathsome and loveable at the same time and Black manages to occasionally steal the show from King Kong. I also have to admit that I did get a laugh or two watching Kyle Chandler of TV Early Edition fame spoof on his good look and listening to his remarks about differences between an everyday hero and a movie hero.

Jackson’s King Kong leaves some interesting unanswered questions such as how the crew manages to ship Kong to New York and how they transport him once on land, etc. It is also too bad that Fay Wray died before she had a chance to say the famous last line in the movie (“It was beauty killed the beast”). It could have been Jackson’s ultimate tribute to the movie that he claimed has inspired him to become a filmmaker. In many ways, Jackson is probably not that much different from Denham and original King Kong creator, Merian C. Cooper: they are all innovators, adventurers and dedicated craftsmen of their times, but I do hope that he would start making some more personal movies like he did in his early days. My favorite Jackson movie is still 1994’s Heavenly Creatures in which Kate Winslet made her feature film debut. Out of his The Lord of Rings trilogy, I have only loved the first one, not because of its spectacular special effects and battle scenes, but because of its compelling story and flesh-and-blood characters.

Jackson’s King Kong shows that CGI has truly become the eighth wonder of the world. It is a marvel how technology has propelled movie fantasies into an area that no one had dreamed possible before, but after a three-hour thrill ride, I long for Jackson to go back to his early roots.

The Squid and the Whale

The Squid and the Whale is a painful movie to watch. It is painful because it is so unabashedly realistic and so brutally honest. It is a family drama dealing with the painful after-effects divorce has on spouses and particularly, on kids. It is a teenage boy coming of age story. It is a movie about many things, but interestingly, it has been categorized by most critics as a comedy and has been nominated for Golden Globe best picture in musical or comedy category. Before anyone goes to see this movie, just be forewarned this movie may be one of the darkest dark comedy in years.

Writer/director Noah Baumbach wrote the script based on his own childhood experiences. Like the Berkman family in the movie, he was a native New Yorker raised in Brooklyn. The two literary parents in the movie, Bernard and Joan Berkman (played by Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney), closely mirror Baumbach’s own parents. His father, Jonathan Baumbach, is a novelist and film critic. His mother, Georgia Brown, used to be a Village Voice film critic. Bernard Berkman even has the same beard as Jonathan Baumbach and wears old clothes that belong to senior Baumbach. According to all the interviews he did for this movie, Noah Baumbach brought his parents into the process once he got close to shooting because he needed to use a lot of things from his childhood that were in their houses. It makes me cringe to think about his parents’ reactions upon seeing this movie (supposedly his parents have both loved it).

The movie is set in 1986 and opens with a doubles tennis match between Berkman family members. It immediately clarifies the family dynamic. Older son, Walt (played by Jesse Eisenberg), idolizes his father and younger son, Frank (played by Owen Kline), adores his mother. It also gets right into the marital tension between the parents by displaying Bernard’s competitiveness against Joan. Noah Baumbach does not waste time to pinpoint any specific moment or reason in the disintegration of this marriage; instead, he focuses on showing a family in emotional transition as truthfully as possible. We see some of the mundane routines in daily lives, witness children’s realization that their parents are flawed human beings, just like everyone else, and agree with Walt’s friend that “joint custody blows”.

Shooting the film on Super 16 has helped Noah Baumbach to be on budget and create a very self-conscious, raw, grainy look for this movie, but for me, the lived-in quality of this film largely lies in its superb writing. Baumbach did not write the script with self-pity or sentimentality in mind. He aimed to explore Berkman family dysfunction matter-of-factly, never opting for easy answers, and imbued plenty of everyday humor throughout the movie (which may have been used by the marketing department to sell the movie as a comedy). His dialogue is crisp and believable; his characters are complicated and multi-dimensional; and his attention to period detail is meticulous. Out of all the authentic characters in this movie, Baumbach’s Bernard Berkman should become a movie classic in the same caliber as Mrs. Robinson. He has captured Bernard’s pretension, self-indulgence, narcissism, egotistic behavior, insecurities and fears with such honesty and wits. It is simply astonishing!

The movie has a solid cast. Younger brother, Frank, may be the hardest to play. Because of his age, he is understandably affected most by his parents’ divorce. Frequently neglected in his parents’ joint custody tussle, he turns to alcohol, curse words and masturbation to express his anger. When he is left alone for three days at home, you cannot help feeling the pain he must be going through. It is a tough role for any child actor, but Owen Klein handles it convincingly. As an offspring of a Hollywood couple (Kevin Klein and Phoebe Cates), he may have witnessed plenty of dysfunctional families and known kids like Frank. Walt has to be a familiar role for Jesse Eisenberg. In recent years, he seems to have been typecast as an awkward teenage boy struggling with his self-identity. His Walt is not a major departure from his role as Nick in 2002’s Roger Dodger, except Walt may be cockier and less sweet. Anyone who has gone through adolescence can identify with Walt’s insecurity, self-doubt, sexual awakening and search for guidance. He puts his father on a pedestal and quotes Bernard’s comments as if it were his own. In the end, when he comes face to face with Bernard’s failures as husband and dad, hurt on his face is indescribable. Laura Linney predictably pulls a good performance as mom, Joan. As she did in Kinsey, she made herself look very plain to add another layer of naturalness to this movie. When Frank said his friend thought her ugly, it comes as no shock to the audience. As a fellow writer, Joan is eclipsing her husband by having her book published. Linney perfectly shows both Joan’s excitement and fear at this crucial time of her life. Billy Baldwin even breaks his usual mode and does a fairly good job playing a tennis pro-turned-club pro with a pot belly visible under his shirt. But the movie belongs to Jeff Daniels. He has never been better and is on top of his game. Working from the best written character in the movie, Daniels makes Bernard completely come alive on screen. He manages to mesh into the character so effortlessly that it is almost impossible to draw the line between the character and acting. From incredibly stupid Harry Dunne in Dumb & Dumber to intellectual snob Bernard Berkman in The Squid and the Whale, Jeff Daniels has truly shown his acting range.

In this movie, Baumbach has used a lot of direct or indirect mirror images that are quite revealing. Four main characters constantly look through mirrors in search of true selves. When Bernard comes to Joan’s house, we often catch his face in multiple reflections in the door’s glass panes. As Joan opens the door, we can understand there may be many sides of Bernard Joan has seen through her 16-year marriage. The character of Bernard’s student, Lili, not only acts as a future source of conflict, but also as a surrogate for young Joan. Joan may have shared Lili’s fascination and adulation of Bernard when she was a college student. Baumbach has also used some simple room decorations as means to express children’s feelings. Walt’s favorite movie poster, The Mother and the Whore, clearly implies his mixed feelings towards his mother; and Frank’s poster of his favorite tennis player is undoubtedly a challenge to his father’s snobbishness. New York also plays a large role in this movie. Parking space shortages in the city is Bernard’s excuse for expressing anger at his life and stagnant career. His request for the kids to stay with him when searching for a parking space shows both his inconsideration for other people and his deep fear of loneliness. My personal favorite scene happens near the end of the movie. Right before he is put into the ambulance, Bernard makes another intellectual romantic gesture to Joan by alluding to a scene in Breathless. When Joan doesn’t understand it, the disconnection between them is so clear that there is no doubt in any audience’s mind this marriage is beyond repair.

The movie has used Pink Floyd’s song, Hey you, brilliantly. I had never been a Pink Floyd’s fan before, but after this movie, I cannot get this song out of my mind. Walt plagiarized the song and performed it as his own to win a school contest. The song is clearly his cry for help, understanding and love, but it also reflects other characters’ feelings of isolation and desires for emotional intimacy. Baumbach disperses pieces of the song whenever the mood requires it, but never overwhelms us with the entire music. It is a wonderful song well chosen for both the time period and story in the movie.

One thing that puzzles me is the movie title. It comes from the Museum of Natural History’s ocean diorama of a giant squid trying to eat a sperm whale. (Incidentally, this year the scientists for the first time captured a live giant squid on camera.) Baumbach said in interviews that as a kid, he had always been taken and terrified by that squid and whale diorama, but never elaborated if there is any deeper meaning behind the title. While watching the movie, I couldn’t help thinking which one of the two parents is squid and which one is whale. I am still trying to figure that one out without any success.

The Squid and the Whale is what all American independent movies should be: It engages the audience rather than being self-indulgent; it provokes strong emotions rather than leaving the audience cold; and above all, it has a strong story to tell rather than just some long still shots to display.

Painful as divorce may be, positives have resulted from both the Berkman and Baumbach breakups: it finally frees Walt from his father’s influence and gives him an opportunity to become his own person; and it gives Noah vast creative material and transforms his personal journey into a rich tour for the audience. Hey you, why not check out this movie?