Hundreds of movies are released every year (probably thousands if you include the adult film industry), and only a select few of them ever make it to theaters.
The most unfortunate thing is that the vast majority of movies that achieve wide theatrical release do not do so based on their artistic quality. It simply depends on how much the filmmakers want to pay for distribution.
Because of this, many excellent pieces of work frequently go nearly unnoticed. Johnson City rarely shows any limited release movies, and the Sundance Festival in Utah is a bit of a drive.
Luckily, however, once a film is released on DVD it can be easily accessed by those of us who might otherwise be limited by geography.
One relatively independent movie that generated quite a buzz over the past few months was Noah Baumbach’s semi-autiobiographical piece, The Squid and the Whale.
Baumbach, who most recently is remembered for co-writing The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou with Wes Anderson, has teamed up with Anderson again to produce an extremely dark comedy about a Reagan-era family going through a divorce, focusing strongly on the experiences of the family’s two sons.
Jeff Daniels (Because of Winn-Dixie) stars alongside Laura Linney (Love Actually) as a once-accomplished novelist who has been in a dry spell for many years.
His glacial personality and pompously doctrinaire stance on specific writer, novels, magazines, hair colors on women, et cetera eventually drove his wife (Linney), an aspiring writer, to infidelity.
The family’s total dysfunction is made all the more apparent throughout the film as each member, with the exception of the mother, retreats selfishly and sometimes violently into his own experiences and thoughts.
The movie is strange – there is no way around that. The dialogue is bizarrely written, and the interactions between characters are often inexplicable and unresolved.
There are many scenes which depict things so far removed from what an audience might consider to be normal that the action is almost painful to watch.
The film is undeniably well-crafted, however, which is precisely why the deviance is so poignant.
Even the characters themselves do not lend themselves to any sort of easy judgement. The father is both pitiful and despicable, while the mother is both noble and deceitful. The children are both obviously hurt and angry while feeling confused regarding how to handle the powerful, foreign emotions that they are harboring towards their parents.
With no individual being depicted in the film as a benevolent and glorified hero, the film cannot really be spoken of in terms of good guys and bad guys.
Instead, The Squid and the Whale effective tells the story of four people, all equally flawed, each sharing his or her part in the mess they have made for themselves.
Uncomfortable to watch and even more difficult to think about, The Squid and the Whale makes a valiant effort to communicate the pain, confusion and acute untreatable loneliness that accompanies the breakup of a family.
Despite all odds, the film manages to end optimistically, and the audience will take away from the experience the impression that, even in the bleakest of situations, there can be hope of recovery.
The Squid and the Whale is rated a deserved R for strong sexual situations and rampant adult language. It is currently available on DVD.
Love me? Hate me? I’d like to know. Email your comments and suggestions to themoviegoer.cj@gmail.com.

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