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December 20, 2007

Comments

I watched this one last night (right before "Helvetica" - what a double feature!), and am still trying to wrap my head around certain aspects of it. I don't buy all that Armond White selfishness interpretations stuff (a whole other discussion unto itself), but at times I wasn't sure whether to accept the film's characters as nasty, wounded individuals being given a humane and sympathetic portrayal, or just as siphons for some deeper kind of judgment, as if Baumbach were channeling past experiences into an embarassing display in the same way Margot did (inadvertantly?) in her own writing.

Still love "The Squid and the Whale" though. And I did kinda love all the performers here, even Kidman (which surprised me), and Black most of all. After suffering through Angelina Jolie's carefully calculated wails of agony in "A Mighty Heart" (an opinion I was unsurprised to see expressed in your own review, which I only followed up on after seeing the film myself; some people have told me how similar they think our tastes align), his naked exhibition was a much-needed dose of genuine emotion.

Rob: There's definitely a sense that Baumbach is working out his own personal stuff in a way similar to Margot's writing, though his feelings about these characters at least seems mixed, whereas Margot seems to be more of a full-on exploiter of her relatives and her past.

And agreed about Black's turn, especially in comparison to Angelina's skin-deep performance in A Mighty Heart...

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