It seems that I've hit an awkward patch, in that my last several choices for a family movie (The 40 Year Old Virgin, The Weather Man and, most recently, The Squid and the Whale), while great films all, were not exactly family appropriate. In hindsight, for each case, a better choice could have been made for overall family enjoyment. As personal choices, however (exempting The 40 year Old Virgin), they were were excellent.<br /><br />I chose this film primarily for all of the critical praise it has gotten, especially from what I saw at the Independent Spirit Awards. This is an extremely touching movie about a family struggling to function in the throws of a divorce. We, as an audience, are brought to sympathize with Walt Berkman (Jesse Eisenberg), the eldest son of the divorcing couple. And, as a result, we sympathize most with the parent that he sympathizes with. For the majority of the film, this is the father. However, through an ingenious perspective shift near the end of the movie, we realize that the father is not nearly so free of blame as it first appeared. It becomes more obvious, especially near the end, that the mother cares all about the children, and little for their father, while the father cares all about the marriage, and little for the children.<br /><br />When I say that he cares little for the children, it's a strong trait of his. He's an extremely self-indulgent intellectual, who values intelligence and culture. He attatches himself to the older son because he tries to emulate his father, and thus reads what books he's told are good, and passes those he's told are not; watches what movies his father likes while avoiding those his father doesn't; thinks and speaks how his father would, when it's obvious he knows almost nothing about what he's talking about. This last point is brought to attention throughout the movie; from plagiarizing the song, to talking to his girl-friend about Kaufkas "Metamorphasis" (both times), to when his teacher says he doesn't think that Walt's read The great Gatsbey (despite his excellent paper on the subject). It's almost painful, at times, to watch Walt slavishly take his father's advice when it is clearly the wrong advice for him, as an individual, to be taking, and how he always blindly takes his father's side over his mother's.<br /><br />The brother, Frank Berkman (Owen Kline), is the opposite, and takes his mother's side over his father's. He then sinks into a life of drinking and perversion (such as masturbating all over the school, and wiping his semen over library books, lockers and bathrooms). The way he clings to his mother and rejects his father is typically Freudian. It actually reminds me of an excerpt from "The Interperitations of Dreams", which reads, "His destiny might have been ours because the oracle laid the same curse upon us. It is the fate of all of us to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred against our father. King Oedipus, who slew his father and married his mother shows us the fulfillment of our own childhood wishes." It seems, as the movie unfolds, that he might have an Oedipus complex; especially in the scene where he's left alone for the weekend, lays his mother's underwear out on the bed and masturbates.<br /><br />The acting was incredible; some of the best I've seen for the last year. The casting was perfect, the writing impeccable and the directing exquisite. In fact, the only part of the movie that I had a problem with was that they would make Walt see a therapist because he plagiarized a song, but for Frank (Who's what, 12 years old?) who has a growing drinking problem and who's masturbating around the school (and spreading the semen wherever he pleases), they simply have a conference and tell the parents to talk to him. Personally, I would think that the actions would be switched. Otherwise, there was no actual flaw to be found in the film. The parallel between the fighting parents and the squid and the whale (for which the title derives) was an interesting and very thought-compelling one, to the point where I started to wonder who exactly was the squid, and who the whale (I've come to the conclusion that the father is the squid and the mother is the whale, although this might certainly be open to interpretation).<br /><br />This is easily one of the best films of 2005 in almost every regard. I would recommend this to any fan of good movies, especially dramas, but more specifically to people who have divorced or divorcing parents. As a study of cinema, this is definitely a must-see.