They experience the world from above. 

It is as though none of the Tennenbaum children feel quite real, hovering above reality. This experience of their distance from reality exists both for the viewer and for the characters themselves. Their exceptionality has raised them and, in doing so, it has left them lonely, directionless, and empty. They live as specters in the shadows of their former successes. Their brilliance serves as a double bind: they struggle to live with their talents and they struggle to live without their talents. Even further, they are exhausted, despite their stagnation. Their unhappiness seems abyssal and leads only to further narcissism and inwardness, searching for meaning only to further enclose themselves. This film called to mind one of my favorite books, J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. Both works concern the search for meaning in the wake of exceptionality, the overwhelming desire to escape oneself and to discover something higher, the existential crises that arise from suffocating interiors that threaten to swallow us whole. Most importantly, these works constitute the opening of a possibility of something beyond this interior struggle for survival.