for me sometimes,” she tells her daughter at
one moment of clarity. Nerves slowly shred-
ding at the thought of an upcoming trip to
Antarctica she promised to Bee, Bernadette
tries to get a prescription for an anti-
psychotic drug that could help alleviate sea-
sickness, which raises alarm bells for an
already concerned Elgin. It’s all so unsettling
that when we first see her pacing her house
and chatting with Manjula, her virtual assis-
tant from Delhi, it takes a moment to realize
she isn’t talking to herself à la Blue Jasmine.
In a clever and effective structural
gambit, Linklater waits a spell to give us
a full picture of the motivations and
backstory for her dissatisfactions. It isn’t
until a fawning young fan approaches
her on the street that we are clued in that
Bernadette Fox is no mere local eccentric.
She’s “one of architecture’s true enigmas,”
explains an amusing online video essay,
watched by Bernadette with mounting hor-
ror, which tells the story of her early career
as a MacArthur Genius and her landmark
L.A. constructions: the Beeber Bifocal,
which converted an industrial factory into
a skylight-roofed home decorated with
glass lenses and frames; and the proto-
green-living Twenty-Mile House, for which
everything in and of the house comes
from materials found in a 20-mile radius.
(Linklater brings Semple’s architectural
concepts to life with convincing sketches
and composites.) After seeing her work
destroyed by greedy landowners—and suf-
fering a series of miscarriages—Bernadette
followed Elgin to Washington’s “EmeraldCity” and dropped out of sight.
Now that we know that Bernadette’s
disquietude—mercurially embodied by
Blanchett—is fueled by professional and
personal trauma, the remainder of Link-
later’s film becomes a poignant adventure
story chronicling the character’s journey
toward extrication and rejuvenation. Link-
later risks broadness, yet never pushes
things into satire, taking Bernadette from an
angry yet realistically modulated confronta-
tion with Audrey to a nearly screwball inter-
vention scene to a satisfyingly implausible
disappearance to Antarctica—without Bee
and Elgin, who’d intended to accompany
her. Husband and daughter are hot on
Bernadette’s trail, always just missing her as
she bops from kayak getaway to science
research outpost, and all but smuggles her-
self to the off-limits South Pole; while this
extended climax could have gestured toward
last-minute farce, Linklater and Blanchett
treat Bernadette’s self-rediscovery with the
proper gravity. It’s in this unexpected space
that the film’s emotional center fully reveals
itself, not least in the often-unreadable
Elgin’s touching acknowledgment of the role
he played in Bernadette’s breakdown, admit-
ting he didn’t encourage her to make her art
(Elgin is a great showcase for Crudup’s
brand of disconcerting calm). No longer sti-
fled by domesticity or Seattle, Bernadette
will soon be free and clear to rebuild her life,
quite literally. Where’d You Go, Bernadette is
about love, but for an American film, it’s
something even rarer—a film about the
rekindling of a woman’s brilliant career.July-August 2019| FILMCOMMENT| 69Where’d You Go, Bernadetteis about love, but for an American film, it’s something even rarer—a film
about the rekindling of a woman’s brilliant career.SHORT TAKE
WHAT YOU
GONNA DO WHEN
THE WORLD’S
ON FIRE?Director:
Roberto Minervini
Country/Distributor:
Italy/USA/France,
KimStim
Opening:August 16“Every word they
spoke, I ate it with a
spoon,” says Judy
of her elders in
What You Gonna
Do When the
World’s on Fire?.
Judy, the owner of
a struggling bar, is
one of many faces
and personalities
that populate the
screen in Roberto
Minervini’s film,
which takes place in
New Orleans. It
fluctuates between
moments in her life
and those of young
Ronaldo and Titus,
beating back bore-
dom in the summer
months; New Black
Panther Party mem-
bers strategizing
amid the extrajudi-
cial killings of Black
people (namely,
Alton Sterling, who
was murdered in
Baton Rouge); and
Chief Kevin, a Mardi
Gras Indian.
So often in themidst of encounter-
ing violence or
financial uncertain-
ties, we look to our
elders. My favorite
scenes in the movie
are those of com-
munal connection:
Ronaldo and Titus
observing atten-
tively as Kevin tries
to fix their bike,
Judy cooking
gumbo with her
grandmother, Black
Panthers knocking
on doors looking for
answers about
deaths. Minervini’s
use of black-and-
white photography
befits these con-
texts, casting wrin-
kles and beads of
sweat or tears in
sharp focus. The film
teems with beauty.
What You Gonna
Do When the
World’s on Fire?
is at its best an
archival document of
a group of people at
a particular time in
their lives, rather
than a launchpad to
start a conversation
about race. Min-
ervini shows what
Black people have
always done when
the world is on fire:
live, organize, pro-
tect one another,
and keep our history
at the forefront.
—Tayler MontagueThe
Nightingale
BY NATHAN LEEDirector: Jennifer Kent
Country/Distributor:
Australia/Canada/USA, IFC Films
Opening:August 2N
ot gonna lie, my immediate
reaction after clapping eyes on
British lieutenant Hawkins (Sam
Claflin) was, oh hey he’s cute... for a basic
white guy. Questionable taste in men, as it
happens, is not beside the point in TheNightingale, a movie whose languorous
runtime affords ample mental space to
reflect on one’s culpability. A disquisition
on the historical crimes subtending the
category “basic white guy,” Jennifer Kent’s
follow-up to The Babadookis another kind of
horror film, in which the monster has crept
from the shadows of one woman’s psyche to
brutalize the daylit social field. This crea-
ture’s name is colonialism, and, unlike the
title character of Kent’s breakout, he is very
much not going to become a queer meme.
Hawkins is posted to a penal camp in
19th-century Tasmania where he oversees a
small population of Irish prisoners. His
attentions center on Clare (Aisling Fran-
ciosi), a young woman seven years into her
sentence for a minor crime. Married to