Bernie, or: When form innately limits quality

Bernie (2011)

Directed by Richard Linklater

***SPOILERS***

Richard Linklater has never been one for change. Straightforward narratives with inoffensive and unadventurous camerawork is his game, allowing his writing to tell the story more than any extraneous factor. What makes Linklater’s films so engaging are his casts of colorful characters, all of whom interact with one another in surprisingly honest and familiar situations. His only true departure before Bernie was A Scanner Darkly, which required a year and a half of post-production animation editing to make the film look every bit as fucked up as Paprika. But while A Scanner Darkly seemed audacious enough to recall the Slacker days of Linklater, Bernie’s quirkier attributes are anything but risky. Combining a strange use of mockumentary filmmaking and reenactment footage, Linklater proves by the end of his film—encouraged by a final shot of Jack Black laughing with Bernie Tiede in prison—he has done nothing more than simply relate the wacky tale surrounding Bernie to the viewer in the most innocuous way possible. All of it is backed by Linklater’s familiarly lazy form, which would limit even the most adept filmmakers from producing anything beyond pure entertainment, holding about as much meaning or relevance as your typical TruTV police investigation tale.

First and foremost, we must ask ourselves: is there any possible way to make Linklater’s form work? If you believe Bernie succeeds purely through entertainment value, then Linklater may have pulled it off. The story of a gentle man becoming a cold-blooded murderer is fascinating, but shouldn’t we expect more than an straightforward commentary that doesn’t delve any deeper than the collective mindset of the town of Carthrage, Texas? This is where the “entertainment” value of Linklater’s film comes into play, with each of the face-time interviews fully capturing the idiosyncratic nature of the town and its tightly knit residents. They laugh and joke about the intimacy of their small town, all the while embracing their togetherness unknowingly. Certainly, by the end of the film, Carthrage, as a whole, has come to display its own personality, which is key in understanding how close Bernie Tiede (Black) came to actually being acquitted for murder. And through the form we understand how infectious Bernie's personality was.

And through the form we understand Danny Buck’s (Matthew McConaughey) tugging predicament as an upholder of the law.

And through the form we understand how manipulative the justice system can be.

And through the form we’re able to glazingly understand what could have occurred between Bernie and Marjorie (Shirley MacLaine).

But when did (sort of) understanding become enough? Does Linklater’s foray into clear-cut reenactments say anything about Bernie that the citizens of Carthrage don’t tell us? If we go beyond any sort of “entertainment” argument and ask Bernie to actually relate Bernie’s story, we would expect the given form to give meaning and weight to Bernie’s actions. How can there be any bit of weight when the story is told through the mouths of gossiping individuals? The moment leading up to Bernie’s execution of Marjorie is related through a combination of people relating Bernie’s troubled situation with her and a lazily thrown together montage of Bernie wincing at Marjorie’s absurd chewing habits, neither of which benefits the other due to opposing contours and level of insight. Bernie’s annoyance at Marjorie’s chewing is a rather lame attempt to justify a theory surrounding the murder, yet it still holds more weight than the “in-depth” coverage from the citizens of Carthrage, which is telling because the chewing sequence is one of Linklater’s only adventurous attempts to relate Bernie’s troubled psyche.

In fact, any honest or engaging attempt to relate Bernie as a human being is disrupted by the face-time aspect of Linklater’s form. It’s most glaringly obvious when there are surface touches on Bernie’s homosexual tendencies, which is brushed upon oh so lightly and oh so subtly through passing observations from Carthrage residents and Bernie’s perceived manner through such observations, lending the tiniest glimmer of hope that Linklater’s form does more than just simply tell a story, but can also decipher Bernie as a human being without directly asserting facts. But then, sure enough, Linklater inserts a card that reads, “Was Bernie Gay?” eliminating any bit of subtle character development that resonates with viewers and instead directly assessing that, yes indeed, Bernie was probably gay. So now…you know? So what? By directly assessing the burgeoning question, Linklater eliminates any of its mysterious aura and makes it wholly apparent that we should learn everything about Bernie, since apparently it’s less important to understand him as a person—which is strange, since understanding absolutely everything surrounding this wacky mystery seemed to be Linklater’s selling point.

And maybe that’s the point of Linklater’s film: to understand how fucked up this situation got; to understand how close this man came to escaping murder charges. The way Linklater relates this is rather offensive to the citizens of Carthrage and Danny Buck's puppets in the jury, but it wholly captures the stupidity and abandonment of morals that existed in this small town, which was fully ready to brush away murder as if it were a minor traffic violation simply because Bernie was their friend. Coming in during the final 20 minutes of the film, this is Linklater's most adept filmmaking moment in Bernie, in which he's able to utilize several scenes featuring Danny Buck's slow realization that he must move the trial outside of Carthrage. Paralleled with the jury Danny Buck manipulates, he creates two sides of Bernie, neither of which is true, and both of which benefits his case. Danny Buck made the jury falsely believe Bernie was a hoighty-toighty, cultured individual with a vast knowledge of vocabulary, which was more important in declaring him guilty than the actual crime. And Bernie was seen as the kindest, most giving man in the world in Carthrage, which apparently was enough for its citizens to overshadow his gruesome, cold-blooded crime. 

And, in the end, this is why Linklater's movie works on a technical level: it sets out to portray Bernie's depressing situation through bits of gossip, because this is the only version of the story that exists. But the true story rests with Bernie and the deceased Marjorie, lending the movie a bit of weight in conveying how sprawling and inaccurate our version probably is. And, in the end, this is why Bernie is ultimately inconsequential. For wouldn't the emotion be exemplified tenfold in another format? Wouldn't a full-blown dissection of Marjorie's grip over Bernie have been more enthralling than the sole chewing scene that's supposed to suffice murderous thoughts? In the end, does it really matter at all if Linklater was solely focused on relating Bernie's story through gossip? For if Linklater were truly committed, his tale wouldn't feel so haphazardly thrown together, shifting from descriptions of Texas's various sections, to delves into Bernie's sexuality, to Danny Buck's role as a sheriff, to courtroom drama. His tale is told through the eyes of outside individuals, but the weight ultimately falls upon Bernie, and none of Linklater's alternating shenanigans lead to any bit of character development or justification that you'd find in an average television procedural drama. Writing his screenplay alongside Skip Hollandsworth, the man who wrote the original news article of this ludicrous tale, it's clear Linklater was more hellbent on telling the story than actually making anyone care about it. In that sense, I can say: he did a fantastic job.