Austin Film Fest Movie Review: The Squid and The Whale

Meanwhile, Walt cultivates a growing resentment towards his adulterous mother, a woman whose image his father has worked mercilessly to tarnish. The perplexity he feels about these revelations inform his own sexual insecurities and desires. He fumbles awkwardly with his sweet girlfriend, attempting foolishly and unsuccessfully to wear the mask of his father’s misogyny. In his attempt to emulate his father, whom he blindly adores – even affecting his snobbish critique of literature and culture – he has lost his own sense of self. This behavior leads him to cast aside relationships he cares about while ignoring his conscience.

All of this behavior obviously comes from his father, played with gut-wrenching beauty and pain by Daniels. (This masterful performance may get overlooked by Mr. Oscar, but we imagine Mr. Golden Globe – whoever that is – will take notice.) Bernard has become a prisoner of his own mind. He has constructed a reality that insists he is the victim. The paradox of his self-involvement but utter lack of self-awareness pains the audience us much as it does his own family. But his suffering resonates so well with the audience that he goes beyond loathsome to tragically pitiful, if not sympathetic. He attempts to pull his sons closer, not out of love but due to some unconscious need for them to serve as a sort of emotional tampon. He plays sexual predator to his female students, even taking one in as a housemate and girlfriend. (She's played by Anna Paquin, the not-as-young-anymore actress who took the role of Daniels’ daughter in Fly Away Home, a disturbing irony Daniels admitted was not lost on him). The writer, adrift in his own opaque sea of self-loathing, misanthropy and sadness, can not provide for himself, much less anyone else.

But the story is, essentially, Frank’s, and it's the story of his tragicomic attempt to come to terms with his fractured family and his conflicting desires to be his father while still loving his mother. The film is a painfully beautiful look into how parents mold their children’s hearts and minds, sometimes intentionally, often times obliviously. As the film ends we are left with the hope that love and the ability to ask forgiveness and to forgive can offer redemption.