In Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, we are given a look into the beginning of the end of a family. Joan and Bernard Berkman split up, to the dismay of their children Walt and Frank. Walt leans to his father’s side and blames his mother. Frank in contrast to his brother, sympathizes with his mother. Walt’s reaction to his parents divorce demonstrates the extreme of his feelings toward his parents. He parrots his father in attempt to win his constant approval, taking all his fathers opinions as his own. As for his mother, while he acts as if he is repulsed by her actions, claiming she ruined their marriage with her affairs, he actually does care for her. Also possibly lashing out at her due to his own strange feelings for her. Frank, at his age, is younger and impressionable so when his parents divorce, his sense of self is thrown off. He tries to think of himself as looking more like his mother, but she responds saying he has more of his fathers features. This upsets him, because he’d rather see him self as his mother. In one incident, when he is home alone, he gets drunk and looks at himself in the mirror, something he repeats in the film, and says, “Who are you?”. Bernard has classic issues with masculinity and a superiority complex of many men, inherited from society. His failure in his writing career upsets him especially when he sees his wife/ex succeed.
