...if'n you don't know by now...
The only thing I could really report within the last week was my viewing of The Squid & the Whale. A movie for which I had high hopes, only because I knew it didn't really get anywhere with the Oscars. Not like the heavy hitters, Crash, Syriana, Capote, Walk the Line, Brokeback.
So I saw this movie with the anxiety that it might be that sleeper hit that made it through the cracks. But instead, I came away feeling as if here was another movie that I could have left on the shelf. Maybe that's too much of a gut reaction. But I watch a lot of the HBO series with their no holds barred approach to the modern questions of interpersonal ethics, and I wonder how much of the dialogue is meant to be commentary, and how much of the remainder is nothing but intellectual shock manipulation. Like people need to see parents explaining to their children why they had an affair, and then blaming themselves for the dissolution of their children's behavior.
I mean, okay, we get it. Society is forever a continuing anecdote for human being's unceasing ability to behave poorly. And maybe the documenting thereof is healthy. Parents, in a general sense, have certainly begun to allow their children free rein with how to act in the name of "learning themselves." The youngest of the pair was Frank at age ten-eleven, completely unravelling from the effects of his mother and father constantly using each other and their children in unsavory attempts to get back at each other.
I know there are men out there as cold and self-serving as Jeff Daniels' Bernard. Maybe that's what unsettles me entirely about his character. Mostly since I think men like that are ridiculous, and Noah Baumberg said in his "commentary" that he intended for that character to be unwavering in his rigid arrogance. You want him to relent in some way. Maybe see it from someone else's perspective. But everything makes sense only if and when he agrees with them.
God, I guess every guy I've ever known has gone through that phase of his life, usally around age twenty-one until twenty-four or thirty-five-ish... haha myself included. Where he (or I) couldn't help but to impose my viewpoint on everyone around me. And anyone who disagrees is a Philistine. I couldn't help to relate and maybe that's what makes Daniels' portrayal so brilliant, but at the same time, and maybe this where he lost the Oscar, you can't bring yourself to like him in any way. I felt myself repeatedly disappointed by this man in his unfailing need to serve himself, and consequently, warp his oldest son, you can almost sense that hammer falling repeatedly as he shapes a clone in his liking. So is this a way of saying, folks this is not the way to do things? And isn't that the liberal stance on child rearing. Lead by poor example if you must, just for the sake of showing your children how not to live. Only the children who attempt to avoid following in their parents footsteps only fail to find the tread that's never been posited before them.
I only had that experience for a few years in my own life. Maybe the fact that my parents were mostly not open, until maybe the last two years or so, keeps me from "appreciating" this movie as a "worthwhile, must-see" type of movie. If you didn't see it, haven't see it, don't worry too utterly much. It has the ring of a Royal Tannenbaums type production and the characters are in fact, drawn thoroughly and probably realized even beyond the script. It's just that they don't meet in the right places at the middle to give you any good feeling about any of them, except a sorry feeling for anyone whose lives they should happen to touch. At least, Royal Tannenbaums managed to be funny to the point where we could make jokes about them after the show-glow had worn off. Here, I think we mostly marvel at how pathetic they have allowed themselves to be toward each other. How afoul they've run from their own briefly-lived intentions. But take that with a grain of salt. I've just recently seen Jarhead and Capote, two efforts that hit their mark with an almost senior precision. Two movies that managed exactly what they set out for, and no one could ask for anything else from. Maybe I'll watch Squid & the Whale again someday from a different perspective and gaiin that appreciation I desired. Until then, it's just another pretensious effort which will probably drift into video store obscurity.