The Essentials: Richard Linklater’s Best Films

“Inning By Inning: A Portrait Of A Coach” (2008)
ESPN‘s “30 For 30” documentary sports series (which ran from 2009-2010) is rather grand, with the best entries in the series featuring more gripping drama and high stakes than many feature films. Of the initially announced series, three docs ended up being released on their own, including Spike Lee‘s “Kobe Doin’ Work” and Linklater’s “Inning By Inning.” Linklater’s doc doesn’t have him stray far from his roots and sees the filmmaker focusing on The University of Texas at Austin coach Augie Garrido, the most-winningest coach in the history of NCAA Division I baseball history. While his discipline and ambitions are fascinating—this is a man who could have easily moved to the Major Leagues had he wanted—his story is not overly fraught with conflict or drama. Instead this is a impressive tale of drive and focused vision. Garrido had a true calling from a young age, to teach and coach, with winning as a logical byproduct, not the starting gate goal, which in part is antithetical to MLB’s end game. While winning is important, Garrido’s approach is a philosophical mentoring method and an unwavering belief that a focus on pure baseball fundamentals and teamwork bears victories. And his track record shows, more often than not, he’s right. Garrido doesn’t produce superstars or flashy players, just get ‘er done winning teams and his gruff, but inspiring techniques are aspirational. And while “Inning By Inning” is a faithful and true portrait of the coach that he and his friends and family are likely proud and happy with, it’s doubtful that anyone outside of baseball fanatics consider this a must-see sports documentary classic. [C]

“Me and Orson Welles” (2008)
One of Linklater’s more bafflingly overlooked entries is “Me and Orson Welles,” which seemed commercially acceptable enough. A historical comedy/drama about a young man who goes to work for Orson Welles (Christian McKay) in his Mercury Theatre days (around the time of his influential “Julius Caesar” production), it featured none other than “High School Musical” hunk Zac Efron in the lead. But it was crippled by an absolutely terrible promotional campaign (including one of the worst posters imaginable—why is Claire Danes wearing that rictus grin?) and a bizarre, underfunded roll-out (courtesy of Freestyle Releasing) that made it virtually impossible to track down and see. (It’s even hard to find on home video—even though Warner Bros. put it out on DVD, it was sold exclusively at Target.) Even more heartbreaking is the fact that if somebody like The Weinstein Company had been in charge of “Me and Orson Welles,” McKay’s fine performance would have at least been nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar (and just might have won). Instead, he was barely noticed. “Me and Orson Welles” isn’t one of Linklater’s masterpieces, but it’s just as breezy and entertaining as “School of Rock,” with an unexpected emotional punch. It’s worth seeking out…if you can find it. [B]

“Bernie” (2012)
There is a thread of laid-back amiability that characterizes a lot of Linklater’s work that means sometimes it’s easy to overlook his films’ more experimental tendencies, and while in something like “Waking Life” the novel approach is writ large, elsewhere the apparent ease of the filmmaker’s style is such that it almost undercuts his gently pioneering edge. And so it is with 2012’s “Bernie,” a film so well-acted and put together with such a gentle sense of humour and love for its characters that it passes in a pleasurable rush and it’s only afterward that you think back on it, and realize it really shouldn’t have worked at all. Jack Black’s centerpiece performance as Bernie Tiede, who in real life was serving a life sentence for murdering his wealthy benefactress and was recently released from prison, deservedly came in for a good deal of praise, but it’s Linklater’s seamless blending of fictional and non-fictional elements that really sets the film apart. Bernie, you see, was a truly beloved member of the small community of Carthage, Texas, and many of the townspeople who are interviewed in the talking head segments, recounting their memories of Bernie or their reactions to his crime, are the real townspeople. And so when they’re talking about Tiede they’re not thinking of Jack Black, but of the real Tiede they knew and, almost to a man, loved; Linklater uses not just their real faces, accents and homes/porches, but their real memories and anecdotes too. It makes it a funny, fond, insightful look at the mechanics of small-town politics and popularity as much as a true-crime tale, and moored by one of Black’s best-ever performances, dialed back and genuinely quite affecting, the film becomes much more than the sum of its parts; it’s a fable about humanism versus hubris and the power and the limits of likeability. But again, Linklater wraps it up so neatly into such an appealing package that we scarcely notice the sly point being made, if indeed there is anything so edgy to be found beneath all that geniality and affection. [B]

“Before Midnight” (2013)
So who would have thought back in 1995 that “Before Sunrise,” the loose-limbed, talky slacker classic would spin off into a grand, decades-spanning experiment, a trilogy that at its conclusion is revealed to be as much about the passage of time and its effects on relationships as it is a will-they-won’t-they romance? But if the gentle disillusion and acerbic edge of this third installment makes it perhaps the most atypical, it is also the right and truthful way for the story of Jesse and Celine to progress, putting the lie, a little, on one of moviemaking’s (and storytelling’s) greatest and most pernicious constructions: the idea that after the credits roll, our attractive central pair will live happily ever after. In ‘Midnight,’ we meet Celine and Jesse well into their ever after, but whether you could call it “happy” is up for debate: the blush of new love, or love rediscovered has given way to routine companionship, and the pressures of raising their kids and juggling their careers has taken the place of romance and giddy attraction. Over the course of a day and an evening on holiday in Greece, they talk and bicker and make up and fight, their every encounter colored by a kind of authentic familiarity very rarely captured in onscreen couples. Of course Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy are by now fully-fledged equal partners with Linklater in the ‘Before’ scripting process, and the film, by far the most ambivalent and equivocal in tone, has that fantastic, improvised feel, while never losing its thread to self-indulgence the way actual improvisation can. It’s a great achievement, and one whose bravery cannot be overstated: those who fell for Jesse and Celine falling for each other the first two times out would probably have been happy to get a third go-round, with some sort of contrivance designed to have kept them apart, only for them to meet and fall in love yet again. But of course that’s not where a filmmaker of Linklater’s sensibility would ever go. His commitment, along with Hawke’s and Delpy’s, is to these characters, and not to a situation, and that comes to bittersweet, wise and desperately relatable fruition here. [A-]

— Oliver Lyttelton, Jessica Kiang, Drew Taylor, Christopher Bell, Rodrigo Perez