Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		2.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

The Squid and the Whale Blu-ray Movie Review

Children Will Listen

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 3, 2013

So much happens in the course of writer-director Noah Baumbach's 2005 independent triumph, The Squid and the Whale, that it's hard to believe Baumbach fit so much into a mere 81 minutes. But the events register with such impact—by turns funny, painful, excruciating, sometimes all three at once—that prolonging the experience any longer would be too much. Although the film remains one of the most powerful American portrayals of how children react to divorce, Baumbach also manages to encompass a frank depiction of the insecurities of male sexual awakening and the even greater terror that accompanies the discovery, which everyone makes sooner or later, that those omnipotent parental figures protecting us from everything frightening in the world can barely hold it together themselves.

Unfortunately, Sony Pictures, which co-produced the film and released it on DVD, has not given Squid the treatment it deserves. Instead, it has passed off a weak and dated transfer to Mill Creek Entertainment for a Blu-ray double feature with the much lesser Running with Scissors, omitting all of the extras featured on the previous DVD. In other words, to borrow a favorite phrase from Squid's narcissist patriarch, Sony has taken "the filet" from its art house catalog and treated it like hamburger helper.

Although the film's minuscule budget did not allow the production the luxury of removing or correcting numerous anachronisms (license plates, uniforms, architectural details, etc.), the year is 1986. The Berkman family lives in a Brooklyn brownstone. The father, Bernard (Jeff Daniels), is a published novelist and university teacher whose career is on the downslide. The mother, Joan (Laura Linney), is an aspiring novelist, whose career is about to take off after seventeen years of marriage during which she kept the house and raised the children. Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), who is in high school, idolizes his father, seeks his advice on every subject and parrots his every word. Frank (Owen Kline), who is still in grade school, looks up to Walt.

The boys' world collapses when their parents announce that they are splitting. Squid is masterful is its depiction of the futility of Bernard's and Joan's efforts to reestablish a semblance of normalcy, with joint custody, visitation schedules and Bernard's taking a separate residence "across the park" that he has no idea how to decorate or maintain. There can be no question of "normal", when the children's first instinct, after they recover from the shock, is to choose sides—and the parents encourage them, consciously and unconsciously, by deeds and actions that cast each other as the villain. The Berkman family are specific individuals, but anyone familiar with the dynamics of divorce will recognize a recurring pattern.

Walt and Frank are already dealing with the pressures of adolescence when the divorce knocks them sideways. Frank, who is just reaching puberty, begins to act out sexually at school; he also begins cursing ferociously (like his father), drinking secretly and confronting Bernard on any possible occasion. Walt, who instantly takes his father's side, becomes abusive to his mother and ever more confused in his developing relationship with Sophie (Halley Feiffer), a girl at school. He also develops a crush on one of his father's students, Lili (Anna Paquin), who shortly moves into Bernard's new house and is obviously more interested in her teacher than his son. Walt is also headed for trouble as he attempts to impress the world with his musical abilities at the school talent contest, for reasons best left for the viewer to discover.

In the emotional cauldron that the Berkman family becomes, every event threatens a crisis. Baumbach (whose script was nominated for an Oscar), his cast and his talented editor, Tim Streeto (Boardwalk Empire), are masters at pulling viewers inside the maelstrom and holding them there. Laughter comes as a relief, and much of it is at the expense of the intellectual pretense that has become the Berkmans' daily routine. Bernard Berkman shields his disappointments in life behind a barricade of snobbery, routinely dismissing outsiders as "philistines". Naturally Bernard is shocked when his younger son, Frank, announces that becoming a philistine is his aspiration. Meanwhile, Walt affects his father's superior, dismissive tone with his friends and with Sophie, dispensing authoritative pronouncements about authors like Kafka that he hasn't read. When Sophie actually reads "The Metamorphosis" and wants to discuss it, Walt is caught short. He can only opine that the ending is "Kafkaesque", to which Sophie's answer is the polite equivalent of "Duh!"

Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney give bravura performances as bitter exes who stayed together far too long, so that each of them now feels "entitled", except to different things. Bernard feels that he's entitled to have everyone service his needs, while Joan feels she's entitled to be left alone to follow her own path. There's no middle ground between them, and the hard lesson that each son has to learn is that neither parent can be counted on anymore. The film's title refers to an exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History about which Walt tells a story to a school counselor. It's a charming story with a bitter aftertaste.

The Squid and the Whale Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Squid and the Whale was shot by Robert Yeoman, the regular cinematographer for Wes Anderson, who produced the film (and whom Baumbach originally wanted to direct it). But Squid looks nothing at all like one of Anderson's formally composed still lifes. Baumbach specifically asked Yeoman to shoot the largely handheld production in Super16 for a sense of immediacy and because he admired the early works of Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee and the Coen Bros. The result, which I saw theatrically, was neither grainy nor shaky, but it did give you the unnerving sense of being in the room where these intimate family encounters were happening in real time.

Sony's DVD was adequate for its day, but it served more as a memento of the theatrical experience than a recreation. It lacked sufficient resolution to provide either the requisite detail or any sense of depth. Mill Creek's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is somewhat better, but not nearly as good as it should be. In 2005, the mindset of telecine colorists was very different than it is now. Film grain was the compressionist's enemy, and various strategies were employed to make compression easier and artifacts less likely (and this was before anyone had learned to complain about "DNR"). The result here isn't the kind of obvious detail-stripping that results in the infamous "wax dummy" appearance. Instead, what we get is a kind of flattened, artificially stabilized, chunky grain structure that creates the illusion of a smoother image, less like film than like low-resolution video with an extra layer of noise. The video effect is accentuated by recurrent sharpening that is sufficiently noticeable to cause minor ghosting from time to time. This is a transfer that was clearly aimed at the DVD market. Since Sony wasn't putting their label on it, they obviously didn't bother to redo it.

Black levels range from acceptable to weak. Colors are as strong as the compressed shooting schedule and available light levels permitted. (Today, the digital intermediate process would allow greater control over the color palette in post-production.) The only limitation from which the Blu-ray's picture does not suffer is compression. With a healthy bitrate of 25 Mbps, compression artifacts do not add to the image woes.

The Squid and the Whale Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's original 5.1 track is presented in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1. For both budgetary and stylistic reasons, the sound mix is front-oriented and functional, but that doesn't mean it's been done carelessly. Individual effects such as a door slamming or a frying pan hitting the floor sometimes register forcefully off-camera, startling characters (and viewers) who are already on edge. Music is an essential element of the film's texture, not only because of the period-specific song selections—The Cars' "Drive" and the Tangerine Dream soundtrack to Risky Business are among the Eighties signature sounds heard in the film—but also because the Pink Floyd song "Hey You" plays such a crucial role in the plot. Some of these songs are heard as source music, and some are blended into the soundtrack. The dialogue is always clear, though it's often so emotionally fraught that you almost wish it wasn't.

The Squid and the Whale Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Sony's 2005 DVD of The Squid and the Whale featured a commentary with writer-director Baumbach, an interview with Baumbach and writer Phillip Lopate, a behind-the-scenes featurette, and an insert reprinting insightful reviews from The New Yorker and the L.A. Times.

The Mill Creek Blu-ray, of course, contains zero extras.

The Squid and the Whale Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Don't blame Mill Creek for the poor treatment given The Squid and the Whale on Blu-ray. They have done a respectable job with what they were given. Don't even blame Sony, which, like the newly reorganized Miramax, has been all too eager to deposit significant portions of its catalog in the bargain bin, regardless of artistic merit. Major corporations do not leave money sitting on the table. If they treat catalog titles this way, it's because their marketing data and accounting analysis demonstrate that the cost of new transfers and/or restoration cannot be recouped from likely sales. If you're looking for someone to blame, start with all those internet posts declaring that the author won't buy such-and-such a catalog title until it drops below $10. This Mill Creek double feature fits the bill—and you get what you pay for.