In a rare misstep, Richard Linklater botches his take on the bestselling Where’d You Go, Bernadette
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Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a clever novel, full of well-drawn characters and powered by a compelling mystery, all of which suggests that it could be made into a strong movie. But the book’s entertainment value does an impressive job disguising its logistical challenge to anyone looking to adapt it for the screen: a partially epistolary approach that offers multiple points of view and, for some stretches, more psychology and gossip than action. Though the material doesn’t have much in common with the work of Steven Soderbergh, he’s the kind of filmmaker who might perk up at the opportunity to meet those challenges—and maybe feel a kinship with the character of Bernadette, self-described as a “great problem solver.”
Richard Linklater, the director/co-writer who has stewarded a film version of Bernadette, is not exactly a great problem solver. Unlike the exacting and sometimes high-strung architect Bernadette (Cate Blanchett), he’s gently inquisitive, making movies more temperamentally suited to Bernadette’s brilliant but soft-spoken programmer husband, Elgin (Billy Crudup). Linklater has Soderbergh’s experimental curiosity but a more relaxed, spontaneous-feeling methodology. That doesn’t make him necessarily wrong for this adaptation; for a while, he even feels like an inspired choice to navigate the complicated family dynamics of Bernadette, Elgin, and their teenage daughter, Bee (Emma Nelson).
The trio has made their home in Seattle occupying a fixer-upper of a house that Bernadette has never finished fixing up. She was once an architect of great renown, but has become a semi-shut-in, reluctant to join the parental fray at Bee’s private school and managing her life through an unseen remote personal assistant named Manjula. Bee is accepting of her mom’s prickliness (never directed toward her beloved daughter), and happily sides with her whenever, say, a fussy next-door neighbor and fellow mom like Audrey (Kristen Wiig) extrapolates slights and feuds from Bernadette’s exasperated indifference (which, as in the book, is perhaps not quite as devastatingly witty as the text seems to think). Linklater has a lot of backstory and character details to contend with, and finds some clever solutions, like an online video that explains Bernadette’s greatest professional triumph (and a related devastation). And Blanchett is ideally cast as someone both “challenged in the art of basic interaction” and secretly self-conscious about her limitations; even when she threatens to get into an affectation-off with Wiig, Linklater’s chilled-out refusal to indulge caricatures keeps the characters grounded.
Elgin, who has willingly channeled his own genius into a job at Microsoft, worries about Bernadette’s mental state, especially once she (reluctantly) agrees to Bee’s long-standing request for a family trip to Antarctica. Here the story arrives at its most important turn: Bernadette, beset with social and familial pressure, makes a quick and mysterious exit, leaving her husband and daughter puzzled and adrift. At this point, Linklater and his co-writers (or maybe Linklater and his longtime editor Sandra Adair) make a crucial change from the book, not in the plot but how it proceeds. Without getting into spoiler territory, suffice to say that this version jettisons most of the obsessive speculation and detective work that follows Bernadette’s disappearance in the novel—a disastrous alteration that smacks of damage control.
There’s nothing wrong with deviating from source material, but this desperate and ineffective solution to the material’s interiority will make the film version of Bernadette seem even more anticlimactically baffling to those who haven’t read the book. Readers will at least understand why this story exists in the first place. But even in the more successful first half of the movie, there are signs that Linklater has failed to crack the work as a whole. Certain plot details are faithfully introduced but don’t escalate, diminishing both the movie’s comic energy and its dramatic tension. One pivotal scene involves an accidental mudslide that destroys a fancy fundraising party for Bee’s private school, and Linklater seems to have no idea how to stage it. Should it play as satisfying revenge over the smug private-school moms? Comic destruction that goes too far? A genuine disaster? Linklater chooses none of the above, and cuts away from the scene rather than imposing any kind of tone on it.
However small that decision, it’s indicative of the strange ways that Where’d You Go, Bernadette, a movie about upper-middle-class strife, seems determined to avoid any truly unpleasant confrontation. (Several messier details from the book are scrubbed away.) Maybe it’s Linklater’s sense of empathy, so often key to his work, misfiring on him. To his credit, it probably would have been easy to turn this particular book into a quasi-satirical parade of withering takedowns. Turning it into a flavorless, center-less journey of self-discovery was likely a lot more work. That doesn’t make it any easier to watch.
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I bought this book off Amazon thinking it was a Where’s Waldo?-type affair. Supremely disappointed.
Where’d You Go, Richard?
I haven’t read the book but am a big fan of The Great Cate and like Linklater, though not as much as others do (I thought Boyhood a bit overrated). So the big problem with the movie is that it sands off the edges of the character and story, turning it into a genial family comedy? That’s the vibe from the trailer.
Nice to see Blanchett in her Crystal Skull hairdo at least. Her Colbert appearance promoting the movie is worth checking out. She took the part because she loved the novel’s author and the film’s director but also because Antarctica played an indirect role in her parent’s meeting and her birth. Her father was I guess on his way there in the US Navy when the ship broke down, they were near or retreated to Australia, and her mom saw him at the docks and invited him to a dance. Pretty sweet story.
I always thought her “All shall love me, and despair!” moment both turned on and empowered many people of different genders.
I am always down to watch a movie by Linklater, but your phrases “bafflingly anticlimactic” and “flavorless, center-less journey of self-discovery” don’t sound to me like a rare misstep. They sound like some of his most common problems.
What’s interesting is beyond all his art films and experiments and such, the one movie that sticks out that has a triumphant climax and has flavor for days is School of Rock, the most un-Linklater movie is his filmography.
“Un-Linklater”You mean that people say things and things happen and the two are frequently related?I think the “Before” movies are his greatest, but School of Rock is undeniably excellent.Side note: I can’t wait for the fourth in the series: “Before Lunchtime”
I’ve never seen the trilogy. I know it’s a sacred cow, but I’ve disliked the majority of the films I’ve seen of his, so I never bothered.
Before Sunset is short (like 80 minutes) and captures the spirit of the other movies. I like Before Sunrise best, but it’s longer and sometimes cringe inducingly sincere. Before Midnight is probably the best movie of the three, but it’s kind of harrowing. It depicts the kind of unsolvable problems that most movies about relationships ignore.
Love all three, but “harrowing” is a great word to describe Midnight. That’s a hard movie to watch.
My wife and I saw it when we were in our early 30s, hitting a rough patch in our careers, and generally seething in frustration (no kids yet). When it ended we were kind of like, “Yeah, that’s what a grown up fight looks like… in real time.”Kind of fittingly, I talked about the movie with my older brother (who isn’t married), and he called it something like a “sad ending” to the series. And my reaction was like, “No, no, the characters probably have fights like that every six months. They’ll work it out.”In that sense, it captures the exact same tension as Before Sunrise.
The second one is really amazing in the trilogy. I can revisit it again and again.
Also known as: The Early-Bird Special.
I’m really looking forward to the 5th installment, Before Naptime.
Maybe Jack Black is his secret ingredient. Bernie was also lots of fun, if a little more Linklater-ly.
I think “bafflingly” is the key word here. I did not expect Boyhood or Dazed and Confused to build to a major climax. This story moves along more, so when it stops short it’s a lot more noticeable, to me.
Gotcha.I always prime myself for the inevitable conjunction of ‘credits roll’ and “wait, what?”I haven’t read the book so I am very much looking forward to experiencing that feeling again.
Yeah, I wouldn’t exactly warn anyone off of it. And I’m very curious about whether my assumption that it will play even weirder to people who haven’t read the book is correct. Maybe, as is often the case with adaptations, it’s more glaring if you’re familiar with the source material.
I haven’t read the book and was so extraordinarily baffled by how uneven and bland the movie was. To me it feels like when you write a college paper, and you spend too much time on the outline and introduction and suddenly you have one hour before the deadline and you just kind of throw in random details without any evidence, make a claim, and then try to resolve all of your shortcomings in your conclusion paragraph.
Interestingly, those exactly describe the source material. So maybe Linklater actually did a good job?
“Star Wars prequels forever” 🙄🙄🙄
Yousa in big doo doo dis time!
I absolutely loved the book and have been, I don’t know, hesitantly excited? for the film – like I knew all along that it probably wouldn’t translate to the screen all that well, but still want to see how it turns out anyway. If nothing else, I’m curious to see how the production design interprets the Five-Mile House. That’s one of those elements, like Tucker Crowe’s music in Juliet, Naked, that probably works a lot better in book form since so much can be left up to the imagination.
Linklater’s sophomore college student-esque philosophies on life are some dumb bullshit. Movies like Boyhood and Waking Life are presented as some deep, thoughtful understanding of the human condition when they’re just as vapid as the shit that spills out of the characters mouths. So no, not looking to check this one out any time soon.
I bet Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor would have been a better suit for this.
I could see that working, yeah.
Which, between that comment and this review, just reminded me of what a baffling misfire “Downsizing” was for Payne and Taylor, who normally are an instant-classic factory.
“Downsizing” had a bunch of small, great moments for me, but taken as a whole, you’re right. Baffling misfire.
I have seen three different versions of the trailer since it was announced last year, each more disappointing than the one before it. I want to believe there were studio-mandated reshoots/edits, and I want to believe there is a “Snyder-cut”.
I don’t want to stoke the embers of conspiracy or whatever, but there are definitely some bits in the trailers that aren’t in the final film—and while that’s not uncommon, it’s a little unusual that some of the latest versions of the trailers still include some of that material. That combined with the amount of material cut from the back half of the book makes me think that yeah, at some point they recut this thing trying to save it. Given that it’s coming from Annapurna, it may well have been Linklater and company’s idea, not some studio mandate. Maybe it just wasn’t working in a longer form and this was an attempt to salvage it.
That’s a disappointing to hear, even if I had already written it off. Thanks for the info.
Apparently this project was messed around with for years because it tested badly at screenings, so it’s not that surprising that there would be multiple edits and inconsistencies.
Even controlling for the facts that 1. many Linklater movies are hard to sum up in a trailer and 2. most trailers suck anyway, the previews for this have been particularly wretched. No indication of what the hell this is about with a inspirational indie bullshit score underneath, the trailers are spraying flop sweat.
Agreed. It went from quirky mystery to sub-standard melodrama in a heartbeat.
same I saw a trailer for it last week and it seemed like I had first seen a trailer about a year ago? also don’t recall the trailer mentioning it was a Linklater film, which is odd, but I might have just missed it.
How can there be spoilers if the trailers show that she’s gone to Antarctica to build a thing or something
1. A lot of this just sounds like a Richard Linklater film. Which isn’t necessarily bad, but just what we should expect of him.2. Him putting out a new film is my chance to remind everyone that Everybody Wants Some!! was overlooked and underrated film.
I think you really have to be down for the Linklater lackadaisical storytelling to enjoy Everybody Wants Some. I found it *hugely* frustrating in the “Is anything going to actually fucking HAPPEN?” way. Which I concede is as much about me as a viewer as it is him as a filmmaker.
Normally, I’d agree with you, but this is a movie where I felt that at the end, I “got it.” If he had continued too long, and did something more with college, I’d agree. But when the movie ended, just before class started, then I got it. It was about that time just before the next phase starts. It’s about that time when you’re supposed to be kind of an adult, but you’re not, really. The movie itself ends on a bad choice: after all that time partying, he’s going to put his head down and go to sleep. The rest comes during the responsibility. It’s an interesting look.Honestly, (and no one agrees with me on this) I thought Everybody Wants Some!! was a better Boyhood than Boyhood, which didn’t know what it wanted to say beyond, “You know that documentary where we check in with kids every 7 years? Let’s do that, but make it fictional.”
I mean… I get what the movie was trying to say/be, I just think there are movies that say the same thing but do it in a way that forwards some narrative momentum. But I also will always put narrative satisfaction before thematic resonance.Part of the frustration for me was that I really *liked* all those characters. Some people would argue, and I see their point, that as long as I enjoyed hanging out with those characters it shouldn’t really matter if the story “goes” anywhere. But it does. I don’t understand why anyone would create such interesting characters and have them just kinda fuck around for 90 minutes. That’s a hangout and I can do that with my actual IRL friends.
Yes the, umm, “rare misstep” from director Richard Linklater.
So disappointed to hear this since I absolutely loved the book. Go read it now if you haven’t! I could tell from the trailers what they changed which I agree with the author, takes away the mystery from the 2nd half of the story. Guess I will wait till this is out in Digital. Definitely not paying $20 to see it in the theater. Oh well.
I always thought Boyhood was a miss step from him. Of course I was never a big fan. I have liked some of his films though.
Username-comment synergy
While there are a number of exceptions to this assertion, I find Richard Linklater’s female characters to be weakest of parts of his films. He really is a dude centric director. And yes, before you jump on me and bring up the Before Sunrise Trilogy – I hate his romantic comedies.
I haven’t read the book, but in just based on the trailer Bernadette comes off as entitled, snarky, and kind of mean spirited. I instantly disliked her and wanted bad things to happen to her.
I don’t think the trailers did a very good job of selling this movie. I also haven’t read the book and know nothing about the story and all I got from the trailers was “Rich woman abandons her family. They can’t find her anywhere and don’t know if she’s alive or dead. It’s hilarious, trust us!”
That’s pretty much the story and it is decidedly not hilarious. Bernadette is so wacky! She’s casually racist and overtly classicist. Maybe she’s supposed to be complicated, but she just read as an asshole to me. I was like, stay lost you horrible person and leave your sweet daughter alone! That book sucked.
I can’t say I’m surprised to hear about the classism issues as the premise really only works in a story about rich people. If the family was poor the sudden unexplained disappearance of one of the parents is a tragedy, not the premise for a kooky comedy.
Oh, you can never forget about the money reading this book. All the problems that arise come from having enough money for these to be your problems.
She comes off in the book that way too, honestly.
I think I’m one of the only people who really didn’t care that much for the book, which I was really excited to read. Outside of that though, I don’t think the casting is good. Kristen Wiig is a little too flat to play the neighbor, which is funny considering she once had the best characters on SNL. Cate Blanchett I hate to say is now just a great actress who gets cast in roles that aren’t right for her because they need a big name. I wish they would take more of a risk. Parker Posey talks about being up for the Kristen Wiig part in her book, yet feeling like she should be up for the lead. I’m not sure how that would play out, but the movie seems so bland like it could use a heavy dose of eccentricity.
Oh, Posey would be great in either of those parts! Blanchett is a good fit IMHO but the movie weirdly shortchanges her by making her much more of the main character than the book does. And yeah, I wasn’t crazy about the book; I liked it, but by the time I got to it I heard such amazing things that I was maybe a little bit disappointed, even though it’s very inventive and well-written.
The book is a glorious mess. So lets break it down.Bernadette was a rising star who built a Magnificent House using recycled materials sourced less the 5 kilometers from the house itself. When she moved to Seattle due to her husband’s job at Microsoft the Next Door Neighbor bought her famous house and demolished it, this involved treachery and trickery. Devastated by its loss Bernadette never recovers and pretty much becomes a stay at home mom who almost never leaves the house. Her husband starts having an affair with a co worker due to Bernadette falling apart.This all comes to a head when her next door neighbor the new one and her husband try to get her committed to an insane asylum for a variety of reasons and Bernadette runs off to figure out how to put her life back together. While she is busy figuring out what her next plans are her family is trying to find her. With her husband believing his wife killed herself on a cruise ship and her daughter slowly piecing together the events that occurred from a variety of sources including the guilt ridden neighbor who has come to realize Bernadette is not Satan and was not trying to deliberately destroy her life.99% of the Book is Bee piecing together everything that happened from emails, letters and other sources of information like the store receipts while at a boarding school she doesn’t fit in at. It does not paint her Father or the neighbor or the woman her dad was sleeping with in a very good light. Keep in mind all the time this is happening there is a letter written by Bernadette sitting at the private school addressed to Bee that explains everything in detail that the school never bothers to deliver to the student who no longer goes there.
I really didn’t care for the book either. Thought the characters were underdeveloped, they seemed to exist to further the plot, which was too ridiculous to be believed but not ridiculous enough to be amusing. And there were SO many fucked up details. Like the daughter and her friends are in eighth grade, right? But they’re fifteen. Um. You turn 15 in 9th grade. I know that’s a minor but mistake, but it really took me out of the narrative.The flashbacks to Bernadette’s career were really great. Otherwise, I felt the novel was a mess. Did it get such glowing reviews because the writer worked on Arrested Development? I don’t find it hard to believe the movie sucks, too.
I didn’t even turn 15 until after 9th grade. I agree that I thought the book was just mediocre, so if the movie is mediocre honestly that seems about right to me.
I was 15 in 10th grade. People start school at different ages.
I thought the book was the best book I’ve read in a long time. I suspected the structure would be off-putting and it wasn’t at all. When I saw the coming attractions I was afraid that the movie erased the drama of the search for Bernadette and this review confirms that. If I was the author, I would be devastated because that was such an important and emotional part of the book. Perhaps the money earned was salve enough for that. Ironically, I read the book so that I would have a background before seeing the movie, but now after reading the book, I don’t want to see the movie.
I didn’t care for the book much either. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a Seattleite without the money Bernadette has, but honestly I was ready to shove her in the Sound by the end of the story.
I’ve always found Linklater’s work watchable but unmemorable. At best they are a minor, pleasant surprise like “Me and Orson Welles” but I’ve passed on more than half the movies he’s made. Based on what I know of the book and having seen the trailer I wouldn’t reach for the ten foot pole for this one.
Bummer, man, the book is one of my favorites, I’ve read it about 3 times, it’s in my ebook library! 🙁
I like Linklater and all but don’t all his movies kind of suck? They’re the art movie equivalent of junk food. The movies are entertaining and engaging but as soon as they’re over they’re completely forgotten. I remember watching Boyhood and really enjoying it but maybe twenty minutes later couldn’t tell you why I enjoyed or even tell you what the characters names were.
To answer your first question, no.
Okay, School of Rock doesn’t suck.
If movies are entertaining and engaging, they do not suck. Boring and non-engaging movies suck.
Nor, I’d argue, does it hold up quite as well as you may expect. Maybe it’s that I’ve become a parent since my previous viewing, but while there’s still a lot to recommend the movie, there’s a lot more “oh yeah, no, he’s in jail” than I remembered…
Respectfully disagree. I watch Dazed and Confused often, and still find it both funny and sweet. There were scenes in Boyhood that really spoke to me. Linklater really nailed what it’s like to live with an alcoholic father, the constant fear. That scene when Patricia Arquette comes back to get the kids with her friend left me sobbing. I wish my mom had been that brave.
scanner darkly doesnt suck
Does the director of the Before trilogy, Dazed and Confused, and Boyhood “suck.”? I’m going to have to offer a hearty “No,” in response.
never heard of the first. Dazed and Confused is trash, though.
Ugh, the Before trilogy.
I quite liked Everybody Wants Some. I may be the only one who did.
You are not alone, friend
I haven’t seen them all, but of the many I have the only one I didn’t care much for was Boyhood (the lead just rubbed me the wrong way). None straight sucked though.
No. Richard Link later is awesome. All right thinking people of high moral fiber feel similarly.
I’m a bit biased since I kind of know his editor and a lot of people that were involved with Boyhood, but even when I don’t particularly love or enjoy a Linklater movie, I’m genuinely glad it exists. It’s kind of like late-stage David Blaine: it might not be particularly fun to watch him sit in a block of ice for a week, but the feat is still pretty impressive. It’s easy to knock Boyhood (I’ve compared it to a classic monster movie—watching a protagonist slowly transform into the thing our zeitgeist reviles the most: an insufferable teenager), but Richard might be the only guy in the game optimistic enough to even attempt it.Same with Waking Life/A Scanner Darkly. He took the longer, harder path with rotoscoping, and it led to mixed results. But if it weren’t for that, the genuinely amazing documentary Tower never would have happened. Without Tower, you don’t get Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s next project, Undone (not out yet, but it looks amazing). Richard’s easygoing demeanor hides the fact that he’s doing some really experimental things, and his experiments are usually really easy to approach, but very difficult to fall in love with. I’d give his movie Bernie a try. It’s probably my favorite, and likely the only one I’ve watched more than twice. It feels really natural in its execution, but it was a pretty bold move to intercut documentary footage of actual locals talking about Bernie with performances by Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, and Matthew McConaughey.
Linklater’s films > shitposting
They don’t suck, no, but they’re not nearly as good as his proponents think they are (Scanner Darkly, most of Boyhood and much of Slacker excepted). Maybe this is the empathy Hassenberger refers to, but Linklater has a risable tendency to treat his characters’ banality as profound. “Sometimes the moment seizes us”? “It’s beautiful that we get to feel passionate”? The Philosophy 101 musings of Waking Life? Yeesh.
Does Kristen Wiig make bad choices, or does she have bad luck? By my count, this is her 5th movie that looked good on paper but isn’t very good on film (Walter Mitty, Zoolander 2, Masterminds, Downsizing are the others). She’s not the star of any of them, but you can’t say she’s great in any of them, either.
Ah, well. Bought the book two years ago, and I’m about 40-50 pages away from finishing it (not because I dislike it, I’m just a painfully slow-ass reader). Guess I can wait another two years before I catch this adaptation on Netflix or randomly flipping through channels.
I loved this book but I personally never thought it would translate well into film. I had a feeling it would turn out bad when they first announced it.
Every review of this movie i have read comments on the ineffectiveness of the “gnats” and their comedic thinness.. and every time ive read it, it screams how close to home it must have hit for these reviewers.. just strange.. like I loved the book and quite liked the movie (I do agree the lack of detectiving detracted from the second half) and dont really get all the shade..
Stay Wherever You Went, Bernadette You Selfish Twerp.
Now that I’ve seen this I definitely think I liked it more than you did. It has a lot of issues but am sad that it now ranks on the same level as Angel Has Fallen (I know different reviewers different grading criteria but still).