The Squid And The Whale Movie Reflection

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THE SQUID AND THE WHALE

The Squid and the Whale written and directed by Noah Baumbach in 2005 is a semi-autobiographical comedy-drama about his childhood in Brooklyn and the effect of his parents ' divorce on the family set in the mid-1980s. It is a painful account of the break-up in 1986 of the marriage between middle-class intellectuals Bernard (Jeff Daniels) and Joan Berkman (Laura Linney) both of them being writers and its effect on their teenage sons Walt, 16 (Jesse Eisenberg) and Frank,10 (Owen Kline) years old after 17years of marriage. This movie tells us about the emotional chaos of a dysfunctional family.

The opening dialogue of the movie “Me and Mom V/S You and Dad” in a double tennis reveals the family dynamics which appear to …show more content…

He is unable to deal with his sexual urges which he is getting hence he masturbates in the school library. Since he is so young he has less defenses to deal with the emotional pain of his parents’ divorce and the loneliness that comes with it as a result of which it is shown in the earlier scenes that he starts to cry as soon as he hears about his parents’ divorce whereas Walt remains detached and asks the question “what about the cat?”. Frank shows is anger towards his father in one scene where he is looking himself in the mirror with his mother behind him and says that he has the bone structure of his mother which his mother tell him is incorrect it’s like his fathers which he does not like. Frank looks at his tennis teacher (Ivan) as his hero and wants to become a pro like him which his father tells him he can’t to which Frank replies he is philistine and so is Ivan. Frank is not afraid to question and challenge anything which his father’s says and he has independent thoughts which he freely expresses as he does not seek his father approval and this is something Walt cannot do as he seeks his father’s