BAUMBACH BLUES
The Squid and the Whale, Noah Baumbach’s magnificent 2005 film, opens with a family tennis match. It’s a piece of hilarious tragi-comedy in which the lines of the battle to follow are clearly drawn. The hypocrisy of the father Bernard (Jeff Bridges) is slowly revealed to his son Walt played by a young Jesse Eisenberg; trauma and truth seep in by osmosis, just like real life. What is so striking about Squid and its follow-up Margot at the Wedding (2007) is Baumbach’s ability t
