MovieChat Forums > The Squid and the Whale (2005) Discussion > odd film

odd film

posted 14 years ago by Klenic
5 replies | jump to latest

All the characters are A-holes

[–] vaise11 14 years ago

I thought so, too. And the youngest brother.....????? Okay, the oldest brother had some ahole moments that's for sure, but the younger one's antics just made me go WTF??????? Then, I expected to find out the husband had cheated first so it was kind of odd that it was just the mom. Even the tennis pro and the female student were obnoxious. I agree with you - not one character wasn't an ahole.

[–] Klenic 14 years ago

The younger brother was *beep* crazy

[–] Screen_Queen 14 years ago

Why did you expect the father to have cheated first? Because he's a man? Cheating is cheating, it doesn't make it any less destructive if it's committed by a woman.

I don't think the characters were a-holes. They just acted like ones, because they were so wrapped up in their own lives and problems that they just seemed self-involved. But really I think that's what people do when they're in the midst of a situation that will cause monumental shifts in their lives. We retreat into ourselves and reevaluate. Ivan and Lili I think were just self-absorbed and self-satisfied. They had no real problems of their own and no understanding of what any of them were going through, but got involved anyway. I too thought the things Frank did were a little extreme, but that was his own personal way of dealing with it.

I only do it with superheroes.

[–] simontatt 14 years ago

I enjoyed the quirkiness of the characters and especially jeff Daniels`s portrayal. He drives a Peugot 504 diesel by the sound of it. A nice touch if not the actual model that was used in real life.
Parents splitting has to be the hardest thing any child experiences. I would expect that the younger the child, the more the split will affect them.
It`s no wonder the youngest boy is so disturbed.

[–] anghmho 13 years ago

True, the characters are aholes, but very human aholes. The mother was a nurturing ahole, and the father was an ahole who seemed to be unable to alter his long-distance emotional relationship with his family. Neither parent was a paradigm of great behavior. The older son was just an adolescent ahole who seemed to come around at the end, and the younger son was just disturbed by the breakup of the marriage. The kids may have loved both parents, but both parents were selfish aholes, which made their children's emotional lives very difficult.

"Odd" accurately describes this film, but so do "very well done," "disturbing," "painful to watch," and "and I thought my parents had emotional problems." Well, they did. But thank God these people weren't my parents.