my vedana

Last year I posted about going to see a really awful movie - "The Life Aquatic", which we thought was a complete waste time. It was written by Noah Baumbach. Standing in the queue for "The Squid and the Whale" we noticed that we were about to see another offering from the very same Baumbach. We nearly changed our mind as we bought the tickets…but were pleasantly surprised at the sensitive telling of a domestic breakdown. The gentle humour was a good counterpoint to the more emotional moments. The father figure was rather two-dimensional for my liking and there was a bit of a so-what factor to the narrative. The movie worked - not as well as Capote - but it worked. Baumbach is redeemed. Not so Roger Ebert. I checked his appalling review of the movie. Who is this airhead who writes: “I would have loved to have two writers as parents, and grow up in a bohemian family in Brooklyn, and hear dinner-table conversation about Dickens. These kids have it great. Their traumas will inspire them someday.”and then concludes that the movie is really about “how we grow up by absorbing what is useful in our parents and forgiving what is not”? Did he fall asleep during the movie - or what?