Essay: Movie Analysis – The Squid and the Whale

Abstract
This paper explores family’s structure of the movie ‘The Squid and the Whale’ by Noah Baumbach including with relationship, personalities and characteristics of each family members, important demographic characteristics such as socioeconomic status, cultural and racial background, historical period, influence on personality, beliefs, and behaviors such as familial, socio-cultural, biological influences or a major life event and developmental tasks of each member.
Keywords: family analysis, The Squid and the Whale, personalities, demographic characteristics, socio-cultural, developmental tasks
 
Movie Analysis Paper – The Squid and the Whale (2005)
 
The squid and the whale is a story about two brothers living in Brooklyn in 1986 who are deeply affected in the middle of the divorce of their parents, Bernard (Jeff Daniels) and Joan Berkman (Laura Linney). The older brother, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) stays with his dad and acts out at school, while the younger brother Frank (Owen Kline) backs up his mom. (Rafi, 2005) The household tension gets more serious when the mother’s writing career takes off and surpasses the failed ambitions of her professor ex-husband. As a result, the two teen sons’ loyalties are split between their parents, as the mother dates the younger son’s tennis coach, and the father courts the older son’s object of affection.
Walt has become the main protagonist and must work through his dysfunctional identification with Bernard in order to begin to discover what he wants and who he is. While he was struggling for the independence, he found disillusion about his father and learn to face his fear as he found the fight of the squid and the whale in the museum of natural history as a metaphor of his mother and father. As squid and whale are important sea animals like father and mother are important for the family. There are always bad consequences following the fight of these two people. This film, written and directed by Noah Baumback, claims that the film reflects the writer’s personal experience of his parents’ divorce. The film is seen as a letter of hate towards the writer’s own father. The Squid and the Whale is about divisions, clashing forces; the mother and father, the child and parent, the intelligent, the appearance of things and their true nature. Each of these conflicts and every scene in the film is the battle between cynical detachment and vulnerability. It reveals a great deal about the ethics of care, while eloquently depicting the major obstacles to its realization within the family.
The family structure in this movie is a nuclear family of four people including with mother, father, older brother and younger brother. The father, Bernard published a book and thought creative writing at a community college. He is insulting and egotistical with little awareness of his behavior on others. He seems to be failing in work, his marriage and financially but consistently blames his failure on others; people who don’t publish him and his wife’s affairs. He does not take responsibility for himself. He also cannot be attentive to his children because he seems to care only about himself—his own needs, desires, and views. For example, of his characteristic, there is a scene when they are playing tennis, the father is a side with the older brother and the mother is a side with the younger brother. The father told the older brother to hit the tennis ball toward his mother’s left hand where it is her weakness. As a result, this character has low differentiation due to the unable to separate his emotion and intellectual functioning, unable to objective about his feeling, his life is at the mercy of uncontrolled emotion forces and unable to productively face stress. Mother, Joan seems less developed as a character. She is warm but a bit elusive fighting for independence with a husband who is envious and condescending. She seems to be a devoted mother; calls her children chicken and pickle. Like many mothers of adolescent boys, she may be trying to engage them as if they were a younger age level and seems to have difficulty with the aggressive and sexual drives that they exhibit. Like the ability to take care of the kids, this character seems to have greater differentiation than the father. Frank 12 years old true to his name is open and honest expressing what he thinks and feels. He is, therefore, more vulnerable and has fewer defenses to cope with the emotional pain of the parental separation and the feelings of abandonment and confusion that this brings. He engages in acting out behavior and experimentation with drugs in order to subdue some of his anguish. By watching his father 16-year-old Walter has learned how to hide his feelings and often his ignorance behind a jargon that passes for intellectualization. He seems to be precocious intellectually but keeps a safe distance from his own experiences preferring to act in a superior manner in imitation of his father. The different characters of both boys are evident in their response to the parents telling them that they are going to separate. Frank, undefended, begins to cry. Walt remains detached and adult-like asking about the custody of the cat. His own fears of abandonment or neglect are projected onto the pet thus allowing him to deny to his own fears. (Yack) This is an effect of sibling position that Eldest children as more likely to take on responsibility and leadership and younger siblings more comfortable being dependent and allowing others to make decisions (Anderson, 2007). With these factors, the family is poorly differentiated with a high level of unresolved conflicts. After the separation, the family becomes Single-parent families which one parent living with one child. It is said that children living with one parent may be a little off balance as opposed to children living with both parents. It may have side effects on the children’s morale, behavior and possibly health as in this case, Walt, the older sibling acts out at school and used drugs. The movie has an open-end ending where the consequences of the divorce have effects on children’s behavior and did not say about the improvement of their lives.
The attachment style between parent characters is Anxious Preoccupied Attachment as the parents feel emotional hunger and frequently looking to their partner to rescue or complete them as the father then to blame his partner of a wrong outcome and unsuccessfulness of his life events. This might be a sign of seeking a sense of safety and security. As a result, he takes action by pushing her away. Each child in this family seeks attachment from only one of their parent for a different purpose. The older child attaches to his dad as he sees his dad as a ‘hero’, a successful person. His father’s behaviors obviously have an effect on him as the father face the unsuccessfulness of his life and has a delusion that he supposed to be a successful person. He forces that thought to his children and makes them think the way he wants them to which is seeing him as a successful person. The older child absorbs that thought and wants to be as his father. Then, he decided to take his side. However, from his father’s influence of personality, he started to use drugs and copy somebody work and claimed it his own. The younger child is attached to the mother because he is a younger child of the household who seeks love. However, as the mother’s behavior, having an affair with the younger child’s tennis teacher. The child then turns to act aggressively and gain more sexual drive than he supposed to. These then have effects on the children’s development tasks. The children are 12 and 16, both are in teen ages. The development tasks including establishing their own identity, separating emotionally from parents, experimenting with different values and deciding their own values, learning about how to relate to the opposite sex, beginning to renegotiate relationships with family members. (Anderson, 2007) Adolescents in this movie struggle to gain independence from their parents in an effort to achieve an identity. The older child has an effect on establishing his identity and experimenting with different values and deciding on his own values. While the younger child has an effect on separating emotionally from parents and learning about how to relate to the opposite sex. For example, there is a scene when he sees himself and reflection of his mother in the mirror. He wants to see only his physical resemblance to her because he is angry with his father. She states that he has some of his father’s features; trying to keep up a faltering father-son bond. There is also a scene when he asks himself “Who are you?” The older child, Walt, is on the other side. He wants to see his father identity reflects in him. This type of identification does not support the development of independent in adolescents and might cause a fusion to his identity. The father’s ability to recognize how his behavior is harming the children is symptomatic of his failure to think about what they are facing as a problem. According to Levinson’s theory, settle down and midlife transition, involve with reinvesting in work and family commitments, reevaluating previous commitments, making dramatic changes if necessary, giving expression to previously ignored talents or aspirations and feeling more of a sense of urgency about life and its meaning. (Anderson, 2007) The ages of the parents are unknown. However, the age assumed to be between 30-45. As stated above, the father fails to commit the tasks of reinvesting in work, family commitments, making a dramatic change in a positive way, feeling more of a sense of urgency about life and its meaning. He fails to value the importance of his family. The mother fails to commit the tasks of reevaluating previous commitment as she dates with the tennis teacher and feeling more of a sense of urgency about life and its meaning as she ignores the value of the family as well. However, the divorce was not her fault but the husband that blames her. Still, she tends to abandon the value and meaning of family. However, In the relationship between parents and adolescent children, parents should fill their responsibility to further the child’s self-understanding and independence of thought and choice. (Kupfer, 2012)
Construing our identities as social can also mean that we view personal identity as significantly defined by our relationships with other people: “Our relations are part of what constitutes our identity.” (Kupfer, 2012) For the relationship of this family, there are alliances of sharing interest between mother and a younger child, father and older child. Each child in this family seeks different thing from a different parent. Therefore, there is a coalition between father and older child toward their mother as the older child listen to his father blaming her for household failure. As the opening tennis scene says “Me and Mom vs. You and Dad.” (Baumbach, 2006) Obviously, there is a disengagement between two sides of this family and emotional cut off between the younger child and his father and between the older child and his mother in order to avoid fusion and maintain control over their senses of self. By taking a side, the need for identity development of the children is emotionally satisfied. Even though, it is developing in bad ways. Despite her husband, Joan seems to have a sympathetic imagination, responsibility required in meeting the needs of her children as a person who cares more about the relationship. The father, Bernard, always put his own need ahead of the needs of his children. There is a lack of recognition in Bernard to satisfy the needs of people who are in a close relationship. In the end, he displaced from his sons’ lives as he did to his wife because he cannot satisfy those needs of giving care to them, even himself. He is cheap with his emotional resources as well as his economic situation.
The emotional climate starts at the beginning of the film as they are telling their kids of getting a divorce. Walt, who has his attached to his father desired on his emotional condition to be with his father. Even though, Bernard rejects him for seeing his mother sometimes. Walt then has an emotional breakdown of realization of how selfish his father is that he does not care about anything apart from himself. This related to the consensual type of communication. According to professor of communications Ascan F. Koerner, Ph.D., in the article “Family Communication Patterns Theory.” Family members communicate freely about thoughts, feelings, and activities, but at the same time, parents are the final decision-makers about important issues. Their communication action is characterized by a tension between pressure to agree and to preserve the existing hierarchy. Within the family on the one hand, and an interest in open communication and in exploring new ideas on the other hand. That is, parents in these families are very interested in their children and what the children have to say, but at the same time also believe that they, as the parents, should make decisions for the family and for the children. (Koerner, 2006) This pattern can lead to conflicts and tensions as the previous example of Bernard does not let his son see his mother after the divorce even though his son wants to. This causes my desire to be open but also have control over the action.
In my opinion, this family as a whole is undifferentiated including with dysfunctional, fused, unhealthy, triggered and emotionally immature. According to Murray Bowen, Typical roles in dysfunctional families are the Hero, Scapegoat, Mascot, Lost Child, Parentified Child, and Little Helper. (Anderson, 2007) In this movie, the ‘Hero’ role has appeared as the father through the eyes of the older brother. People at the low extreme like Bernard, are those whose emotions and intellect are so fused that their lives are dominated by the feelings of those around them. For example, how he cares about his success and how people think about his work rather than people in his family. As a consequence, they are easily stressed into dysfunction. Bowen considers them to be expressing a pseudo-self, which they may deceive themselves into thinking is real but which is composed of the opinions and values of codependency. These factors are considered unhealthy in family and relationship. This also aggregable with his undifferentiated family ego mass concept of how children are attached to their mother more than father due to the intensity of emotional closeness between individual. However, this can lead to ‘overclossness’ of how Frank is attached to his mother and want to be like her new boyfriend and Walt is attached to his father and want to be like him.
For their marital relationship, as communication is necessary to key for getting the marital tasks done, the couple in this movie does not manage to communicate well. As a result, the comparison level, the unique values, and expectation individuals bring to their relationship, is low because both of the partners does not bring as much effort to their relationship. Despite, they blame each other for their failures. This results in low power on each other due to the ignorance and do not seek control of other’s behavior, the conversational style is also negative due to the failure of communication, there is no rule of reciprocity, nonverbal symbols, as this movie does not show the effort of individual toward the family, there are no emotional bids, equity, fairness and flooding, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and most of the concepts. From this information, the couple has a negative way to handle conflicts. As a result, they end up getting a divorce. Besides, Parents need to find ways to balance the commitment of parenthood, work, and marriage. (Anderson, 2007) Otherwise, it will lead to role conflict, role strain, and role overload. The reason of role conflict in this movie is the father who sees his work and himself more important than the family. He put his career role which is a writer first. This then affects his role of a father and a husband. This might be a reason for his role overload as well. The mother, however, seems to manage well with her role strain as a successful writer and a mother who can take care of the kids psychically and emotionally.
The parenting style in this movie is permissive as they still care about their children but make few demands on their children. This can be seen in a scene when the brothers show sympathy and care for one another for the first time. Bernard demands that both boys get in the car, but Frank, ever honest about his emotions and desires, refuses. Walt intervenes on Frank’s behalf, saying that he will go home with their father. Frank, in turn, responds with kindness, offering the cat to Walt for the night. This ends his father’s true nature to Walt, and the filial generosity of heart is a resultant breakthrough in Walt’s relationship with his brother.
Divorce puts a strain on the finances of most people. Bernard’s concern for money could be seen as simply being realistic, but the film does not depict him sympathetically and he comes across as niggardly. We are thereby invited to see the money as a motif or metaphor. Bernard’s economic tightfistedness symbolizes his stinginess with attention, effort, and heart. (Kupfer, 2012) The main thing that influences this family would be socioeconomic status. Each character tends to be influenced by different things. However, still, get involved between socioeconomic factors.
I believe that this family is unhealthy the to the factors that state previously including with low differentiated individual and family as a whole, Anxious Preoccupied Attachment style, bad influence from parents to children, missing and incomplete of development task of both adolescent and adulthood, consensual type of communication and so on. The children meet their need for physical security and comfort within their middle-class family. But, emotional connectedness, child socialization from parents and self-esteem are not met due to the lack of attention and self-centered parents. As a result of this movie, it would make a great instructional video for parents on how not to split up, at least if their children’s welfare matters to them.
 
Work Cited
Baumbach, N., Anderson, W., Newman, P., Markowicz, C., Corwin, C., Daniels, J., Linney, L.,
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Anderson, S. A., & Sabatelli, R. M. (2007). Family interaction: A multigenerational
developmental perspective. Boston: Pearson/A & B.
Kupfer, J. (2012). Feminist ethics in the film: reconfiguring care through cinema. Retrieved from
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Koerner, Ascan & Fitzpatrick, Mary. (2006). Family communication patterns theory: A social
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