"Squid and Whale", an independent film, won the Sundance Grand Prix. There is no major event. It is about the disintegration of an American family and the struggle for rights between people. Dad is a writer. When he was young, he published a book successfully, but now he is just a sloppy middle-aged middle school teacher, and his new book has repeatedly frustrated. And his wife gradually embarked on the road of writing, published articles in the "New Yorker", and steadily moved forward. There are two boys in the family. The eldest son leans towards the father and the younger son leans towards the mother. The film starts from playing tennis and maintains a tight rhythm from beginning to end, but the way of photography is really fragmented, with a lot of shaking shots, making the whole film full of tension. In terms of structure, tennis and literature have been interspersed with each other, and the narrative comes naturally and clearly. The image of the squid and the whale appeared last. The eldest son ran to the Natural Museum to face the squid and the whale that he was afraid of when he was young. The squid, with its chaotic tentacles and inverted body, is the symbol of the mother; the corresponding whale is the symbol of the father, and the two are fighting cruelly.
In the movie, I saw the predicament of a middle-aged man. He cared about literature and art, but lived in the most basic cumbersome. He took his son and his son's girlfriend to watch David Lynch's "Blue Velvet", and only dared to express his desires with words and other powerless things. When he was young, he walked away a long time ago, and what was left was just a middle-aged man with no life. Marriage is powerless after all... When I was
young, I always felt that my parents were great and could solve anything. Under their protection, I was safe. In fact, on the contrary, the stress and depression faced by adults is beyond my imagination as a child. Children always kindly believe everything their parents say. Lies and excuses have become our truth... If
I have a child in the future, I will tell him/her not to believe what I say, I am better than you weaker.
"Squid and Whale" is quite a movie worth watching.
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