Everyone Has Reversals

Story Lessons, Big and Small (Warning: Spoilers!)

June 08, 2006

Be It Unresolved

The Squid and the Whale
is the story of divorcing parents and their caught-in-the-middle sons. It’s one of those films that tells a messy story with clarity and authenticity… but maybe the best thing about it is its lack of resolution.


Throughout the middle of the film, we’re positioned mostly with the sons, Walt (the teenager), and Frank (the “kid”), who each have an allegiance to a parent. Walt leans towards their famous, but distanced, father, where Frank clings to their loving but self-absorbed mother. As the story progresses, the sons’ allegiances are challenged and start to shift… which parent deserves loyalty the most?


The conventional way to resolve this story would be to have a big out-of-nowhere climax (something like the one the film has, in which the dad has a heart attack in the middle of the street) followed by a kind of coming-together of the characters, as they, especially the parents, suddenly recognize “what’s really important” and start to take baby steps on the road to compromise and understanding. The conventional way to end a story like this is with hope, and the sense that everything’s about to begin anew.


Instead, The Squid and the Whale gives one character (Walt) a modest revelation, but leaves him hanging in that “what the hell do I do now?” limbo. The film resolves nothing and leaves us with a sense that everything’s really fucked up, and it probably will be for a while yet.


Why is this a good thing? ‘Cause this is a movie about divorce.


Two generations of moviegoers have enjoyed Kramer vs. Kramer while recognizing it for the happy lie that it is. Rarely do people understand their own culpability in a divorce, and rarely does divorce make people less selfish.


The now iconic image of the battling squid and whale gets right at the heart of the theme here: there’s never a sense that either the squid or the whale is going to win. This is not going to end soon, or well.


Sometimes no ending is better than a false one.

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