“The Squid and the Whale,” 22 February 2006, theater. Off to the movies a second time this week. What an excruciatingly painful film looking at a collapsing marriage and divorce in Park Slope (Brooklyn) 1986. This is a semi-autobiographical piece by the screenwriter/director, Noah Baumbach, produced by Wes Anderson. The shallow, no longer successful novelist father (Jeff Daniels is stellar, although the piece gets old as it goes on) with his limited trick vocabulary and arrogant pained defensive awareness of his own failure, his wife (Laura Linney) with her now ascendant writing career who goes from affair to affair while living off him and, when finally successful, leaves him, the two boys (one’s Kevin Kline’s son) so relentlessly fucked up by this couple, their vanity, and their juvenile selfishness. It gets the time, the music—at least some of the stuff, not the punk or rock—the class stuff, and the agony of the divorce experience all right on. It was one of the hardest films I’ve watched in a while and it left me feeling terrified about how my daughter will relate to me later, especially when I think of them in NYC while I’m up here. Totally depressing. A powerful, short (only about 80 minutes) film. Excellent supporting work from Anna Paquin as one of his students and William Baldwin as a tennis instructor. See this one, but be advised, it’s hard to watch.