I just finished watching "The Squid and the Whale." About 5 minutes in to it I wanted to reach through my computer screen and strangle both parents, to drown them both in the sea of pain they inflict on their two boys.
The writing is amazing as the writer, Noah Baumbach, recounts his childhood as his parents divorced. He captures this absurd dialog between two horrible people, it's laced with cutting anger, the stench of failure, and it's just so fucking mean. The husband, played by Jeff Daniels, is such a total ass that you want him to not only get hit by the car at the end, but to be run over by it repeatedly. Laura Linney comes out of it a little better as the philandering wife, but this is not a movie about nice people in a bad spot. It's about horrible people so caught up in the own vacuity that they decimate their children with out batting an eye.
DO NOT WATCH THIS if your marriage is in trouble, if your kids hate you, if you play tennis, teach college, read/write/enjoy literature, if you like Pink Floyd, sleeping in your own home, or veal cutlets.
It was fantastic in what it set out to do, if that goal was to make you itchy and depressed. Or, maybe it's just his way of making us all feel better about our own marriages, no matter how screwed up they are. If that was his goal, he reached it.
So, give me your suggestions on what movies I should watch at the library when I should be finding a job.
:-)
2 comments:
If you're into something a bit more disturbing, see if you can find a short film called La Cabina (The Telephone Box). I'm pretty sure it's on YouTube. It apparently aired on Spanish television in the 1970s, and is really creepy. What little dialogue is in Spanish, but if you don't understand Spanish it's not at all necessary that you understand what's being said.
I just found it on YouTube and will watch it soon.... Thanks for the tip.
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