The Very Bad Dad

By RICHARD CORLISS

Bernard Berkman is an uncertain egotist. The author of several novels that beguiled the literati once upon a time, he now has no agent--so he feels he has to promote himself, even to his own family. (He refers to Kafka as "one of my predecessors.") The rest of his life is getting away from him too. His tennis game isn't what it used to be. His wife, restless in his shadow, has turned to writing and got a story in the New Yorker. She has also called off their marriage, leaving their two sons shuffling back and forth between alternate parents. Bernard advises the boys (badly) on dating and on which of the books they're studying is second rate, but he is failing Fatherhood 101. The only course he excels at is Midlife Crisis. He has made such a mess of things, it might be the stuff of a great novel.

Anyway, a terrific movie. That's what Noah Baumbach, son of writers and film critics Jonathan Baumbach and Georgia Brown, has made from the memories of his parents' split when he was a teenager in 1986. The Squid and the Whale is domestic tragedy recollected as comedy: a film whose catalog of deceits and embarrassments, and of love pratfalling over itself, makes it as (excruciatingly) painful as it is (exhilaratingly) funny. Its family quartet--including Laura Linney as wife Joan, Jesse Eisenberg as 16-year-old Walt and Owen Kline as his 12-year-old brother Frank--is a fearless, faultless acting ensemble.

Heading the clan is Jeff Daniels, who gives a reading so naked and true, so dense and pitiless, that it may shock viewers used to the actor's teddy-bear persona. Daniels realized it was a stretch, if not a break, from his typical parts. "I took the role because I didn't know how to do it," he says. "It was new, it was unpredictable and there was a chance to fail." Which is what makes his success as Bernard so satisfying. It's the kind of role that nudges viewers toward a career reconsideration of an actor. In this case, it reminds them how reliable and surprising Daniels has always been.

For decades he has been the anti-Bernard--a craftsman so light, lithe and likable he almost disappears into his best films. He was Debra Winger's unworthy husband, coasting on amiability, in Terms of Endearment; the -er half of Dumb & Dumber, with Jim Carrey; the Pleasantville soda-shop owner who is turned from a black-and-white cipher into an artist painting in glorious Technicolor.

Blending into the pattern of a film's tapestry, surrendering star swagger to teamwork, is a tendency that comes naturally to this native of Pleasantville-like Chelsea, Mich. At New York City's Circle Repertory Theater in the late 1970s and early '80s, Daniels was trained to be "part of an ensemble," not stand out from it. He admits he had to be nudged by Woody Allen to "go on, go on, go on"--be bigger, bolder--in the role of the 1930s actor who literally steps off the screen in The Purple Rose of Cairo, and pushed by Jonathan Demme, to go from repressed yuppie to Melanie Griffith's handcuffed boy toy in Something Wild.

Daniels and stardom have circled each other for years--sometimes to his chagrin. "I understand what it's like being underappreciated," he says, explaining one of the emotions he tapped to play Bernard. The dark bravado with which he attacks the role has already caught Hollywood's attention. "I forgot what a strong actor he was," says director Barry Sonnenfeld, who saw an early print of Squid and promptly cast Daniels, 50, in the big-budget camper comedy R.V. "He's frightening in his coldness." In R.V., Daniels plays one of the "nicest folks you'd ever want to get away from," says co-star Robin Williams. "He can give that sense that, as sweet as he is, a cloud can come at any moment."

Daniels is sweet. He recalls his squeamishness on learning that Anna Paquin, who played his daughter in the save-the-geese weepie Fly Away Home, had been cast as his sort-of love interest in Squid. When they had to shoot a short sexual encounter, he says, "we tried not to think about ... you know, geese."

He delivers the line with the subtle comic timing you would expect of Jeff Daniels. In Squid, though, viewers' laughs turn to gasps and back again as Bernard tries simultaneously to discipline and dazzle his sons. Linney is superb, and the kid actors are scary-good. But it is selfish, flailing Dad who wins the match. As the underloved novelist, Daniels has created his masterpiece. --Reported by Steven Frank/Toronto

With reporting by Steven Frank/Toronto