Is there any director in American cinema more leisurely than Richard Linklater? I don't mean this as an insult—it takes great skill to do leisurely right. What I mean is that his best films (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise/Sunset) are in no hurry to get to where their going, or even to force any action. They just lean back, tell their stories, and let their characters talk. And if it all seems rambling, that's okay, because the dialogue is so good and the performances are so loose and natural that the ramble becomes exquisite. Life is full of rambles, and the movies so rarely allow them—only Linklater has been able to get away with it. Lately, the same leisurely outlook could be applied to Linklater's career itself. He crossed over successfully with School of Rock (a high-concept crowd-pleaser done right), and since then has moved from project to project, some odder or more mainstream than others, in an eccentric direction that maybe only Steven Soderbergh understands.
With Bernie, as well as his previous film Orson Welles and Me, his career has hit an odd phase. Those two films appear more commercial and are definitely uncharacteristic of his previous classics, and yet there's a degree of oddball craft that makes them equally incongruous with the average studio fare. Which may be the reason why some critics don't know what to make of it, and why Bernie has arrived in theaters with little fanfare or expectations. I found it playing at a local arthouse in Menlo Park—it's a place that plays Rocky Horror twice a month and has a sign in the window that says "The Cashiers Do Not Have the Combination to the Safe", but still caters largely to seniors. Shortly before the show, the two women behind me were talking about how it felt to turn 70. I wonder what they made of the film that followed.
Bernie is based on a true story, though it's so bizarre you'd be forgiven for not believing it. In Carthage, Texas, Bernie (Jack Black) is the town's mortician as well as something of a local celebrity: a very active member of the community, he's found by all to be the sweetest, kindest, gentlest, most popular man in town, even if it's clear from the start that something isn't quite right with him. Bernie befriends a wealthy, elderly widow (Shirley MacLaine), who has earned reputation for being the town witch. Over the years, he provides her with companionship (no one knows any more than that) and before long he's her personal assistant, beneficiary on her will, and has power of attorney. But her mean streak comes out. She's demeaning and possessive, and in a brief fit of anger, Bernie kills her. As for where it goes from there, I won't say—but things are just getting interesting.
As a film, this carries more than a couple contradictions. For one, its presented half as straight-up drama, and half as documentary, with the real-life townsfolk getting to weigh in. It's also a Jack Black comedy without the Jack Black persona. It's a film noir with the brightest color palette imaginable. And it's a crowd-pleaser that opens with a morbid, creepy, and slightly queasy sequence on how to prep a dead body.
The contradictions work. The reason that Bernie doesn't—at least, not fully—is that even though it's good for plenty of ghoulish, nervous laughter, it scarcely shows interest in its subjects beyond fodder for comedy. This can be seen in Jack Black's performance, which, until the final climactic scenes, doesn't involve slipping into a character so much as adopting certain affectations: Bernie becomes just another comic persona. But who is Bernie? The answers are too often untreated (or treated as punchlines), so by the end, the film feels more like gossip than exploration. In Slacker, Linklater showed a real sense of empathy for America's most off-kilter citizens; here, it's different. When a parade of eccentric locals from East Texas gets their chance to talk, the ensuing laughter feels smug.
The fake documentary format made me think of the easy comparison with Into the Abyss, Herzog's take on crime and punishment in Texas. That film certainly had its problems—and couldn't escape condescension itself—but through a lot of Bernie's gags, I was left with a desire to see what Herzog, in full Grizzly Man documentary mode, could do with such a bizarre real-life case. I'm sure he would try to plumb the depths of this man, and it would boil down to more than a final shot of Jack Black doing a funny walk for one last laugh.
As for Linklater, he remains one of the most interesting and talented filmmakers today as far as I'm concerned, even if I'm not sure how this fits into his body of work. When I was on my way out of the theater, an elderly gentleman going in asked me if the movie was any good, and I answered "yes" without hesitation. That must count for something.
3 out of 5 stars.
*************
Bernie is currently playing in select theaters.
Directed by Richard Linklater
Screenplay by Skip Hollandsworth & Richard Linklater
Starring Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, and Matthew McConaughey
No comments:
Post a Comment