Bernie (2011) directed by Richard Linklater Screened on September 14, 2022
Our discussion of this film mostly focused on the use of the interviews which comment on the action. The fact that the supposedly documentary interviews are a mixture of real people and actors portraying real people itself demonstrates the contrary viewpoints expressed by Godard and Haneke (see the forum overview). Until you watch the credits, you have no way of knowing which is which. Only Matthew McConaughey is well enough known to jar the viewer into considering whether what is shown is real or fake and therefore how close the reenactments are to what really happened.
The only ones who know what "really happened" are Marjorie Nugent, who is dead and can't speak for herself, and Bernie. The real-life Bernie could have been interviewed; after all, he is shown in prison in the credit sequence. Or the film could have "interviewed" Jack Black as Bernie, as it does other characters based on real people. Instead, it chooses to show us Bernie at a distance.
In one sense, then, the film isn't really about Bernie at all. Instead, it is about the reaction that Bernie elicits in the townspeople. We don't get to know much at all about who Bernie is, except through the opinions of others. Is he putting on a false front? The film hints as much in its choice of the musicals Bernie appears in. The Music Man is about a con man who comes to a small town and bamboozles the residents to pay for music lessons on non-existent instruments. And thanks to guest Steven Masi for pointing out that the first musical scene shown is from Guys and Dolls, in which Sky Masterson sings "I've Never Been in Love Before" to Sarah. Except that Sky is not in love with Sarah. He's only pretending to woo her to win a bet. And this scene is observed by a tearful Mrs. Nugent who, presumably, is imagining herself as a girl in love. So we have a second level of distancing.
The real life district attorney, Danny Buck Davidson, portrayed in the film complained afterwards, "You can't make a dark comedy out of a murder." We didn't have a chance to discuss the pre-credit sequence in the film in which Bernie demonstrates the techniques for making the dead body look good, in fact, better than he looked in real life. Bernie cautions the class that "you cannot have grief tragically become a comedy." So he is apparently in agreement with Davidson. But the film, of course, does exactly that. The opening sequence is the only one that has no interviews to comment on the action, but perhaps it is critiquing itself. Bernie's theatrical demonstration serves as a warning that, despite the opening title card, not everything you are about to see is "true."
One last point about dark comedy. The ending of the film makes, I think, a sly reference to the granddaddy of black comic films, namely Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947), in which Chaplin plays a bluebeard who murders women to steal their money. In the end, Verdoux is sentenced to death and walks to his fate. Bernie isn't sentenced to death, but his comic walk and jaunty demeanor are similar to Chaplin's. Both directors, Chaplin and Linklater, eschew the opportunity to show the expressions on the characters' faces. Instead, both films leave them as inscrutable figures.