Bernie

In the small East Texas town of Carthage, affable assistant funeral director Bernie Tiede (Jack Black) is the only person to successfully befriend wealthy, cantankerous widow Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine). But as time wears on, Marjorie becomes more and more demanding of Bernie until he finally kills her. Hiding her body in a freezer, he spends the next nine months using her money to do good works. Bernie’s sterling reputation – and the fact that nobody liked Marjorie – provides a challenge to local prosecutor Danny Buck (Matthew McConaughey), who is determined to convict him.

Few directors would have the audacity to turn a fairly recent (mid-1990s) real-life murder case into a dark comedy, but Richard Linklater did just that here. Based on a Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth (who also wrote the script), Bernie is filmed in a faux-documentary style with various townsfolk sharing recollections of people and events as the film’s story unfolds. Some of these segments are comedic gold – for instance, one man refers to a neighboring town as being full of rednecks he wouldn’t trust to work on his car. But for as funny as the film is, it also feels incredibly manipulative and insensitive. The film tries to make a hero out of someone who shot an 81-year-old woman in the back four times and lived off of her fortune, and that’s something that won’t sit right with viewers who are just the least bit rational.

Despite the flawed premise, Black is picture perfect in the lead role. Those accustomed to seeing him playing bombastic oafs will be shocked by how easily he transforms into a cultured, sensitive, and compassionate pansy. MacLaine is equally good as she portrays Nugent as a loathsome hag who is still quite believable. McConaughy, sporting a bad haircut, tries to appear as the voice of reason, but his prosecutor character is transparently (and appropriately, given the political nature of the job) self-serving. Just as in Dazed and Confused, the actor seems ten times slimier than normal while under Linklater’s direction.

Bernie closes with video of the real Bernie Tiede, now gray haired and sans moustache, serving his days in prison. That he has still kept his same affable expression lends credence to the saying “only in Texas….” In Linklater’s case, perhaps it should be amended to “only by Texans.”

7.5/10