Running Time: 1 hour, 44 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Richard Linklater
Quick Impressions:
I’m so glad we saw this movie. It was Bernie or The Sound of my Voice, and driven by a mutual distrust of Brit Marling and affinity for Jack Black, my husband and I chose Bernie. Going in, we were both highly skeptical. On paper, Bernie sounds like one of those movies fringe audiences vocally “appreciate” but nobody exactly enjoys. I mean, the plot sounds downright strange. In a small town in Texas, a funeral and choir director is tried for the murder of an affluent older woman with whom he had an ambiguous relationship. Despite his seeming guilt, the town rallies around him and adores him. And, it’s a comedy. Really?
I like Jack Black, but it’s hard to picture him as an ambiguously effeminate choir director/mortician who romances/kills(?) Shirley MacLaine.
Or it was until I saw Bernie.
Jack Black is fantastic in this film. Really, he should get Oscar attention for this. I tend to doubt that he’ll get a nomination because he’s Jack Black, the category is so competitive, and the film is quite offbeat. But he definitely deserves one. His performance as Bernie Tiede is extremely compelling.
And though the film truly is a comedy—the entire audience laughed out loud pretty consistently throughout—Black’s Bernie Tiede isn’t one of the jokes. For Bernie, the story is definitely a drama, and the movie certainly isn’t making fun of him. Watching it, you get the idea that the film was made to exonerate him, or at least to explain an unusual situation that seems very different in life than on paper.
The Good:
This is based on a true story. Bernie Tiede is a real guy, and Marjorie Nugent really was murdered in Cathage, Texas, in 1996. The whole thing is true. But what makes the movie really great is that outside of stars Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, and a very hammy Matthew McConaughey, literally a handful of other actors appear in the film. The rest of the cast is made up of actual residents of Cathage, Texas, people who really knew (and in many cases still know) Bernie Tiede and Marjorie Nugent.
The film alternates between dramatic scenes and documentary style interviews when real residents of Carthage (and a few actors) relate their recollections of Bernie, Mrs. Nugent, and developments in the story for the camera. Going in, I didn’t realize that actual citizens of Carthage would be featured in the movie. But it doesn’t take long to recognize these contributors for what they are. Either these people were the real deal or the film had somehow assembled a group of entirely unknown actors with the chameleon-like talent of Meryl Streep for portraying residents of a small town in East Texas.
This is kind of like an episode of a true crime show—interviews interspersed with dramatizations. But of course, the production values are much higher, the acting is better, and the story is presented as a dark comedy instead of a cheesy melodrama.
The movie is so funny. You laugh all the time. But the story isn’t a joke. It just sounds like one in the retelling. Speaking of Carthage, I remember once reading an account of Hannibal’s daring journey across the Alps. According to my book, the perilous crossing left him with only a small remnant of his original force “and just one elephant.” That sounds like the punch line of a joke if I’ve ever heard one, but I’m sure Hannibal wasn’t laughing. A story doesn’t have to be about comical events to be related in an amusing way.
Besides laughter, Bernie gives us a rich and compelling protagonist, perfectly played by Jack Black who manages to sing, dance, and display enormous psychological complexity all in the same role. Black’s performance not only captivated—and at moments, moved—me, but it also raised a lot of questions that I always find fascinating and enjoy thinking about. His anguish after throwing down the armadillo gun, and the baffling behavior he goes on to exhibit made me think of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in The Departed. When Billy Costigan is lying to Frank Costello, the fictional Billy Costigan, the character that he is portraying, is telling the truth. I wonder if something similar is going on with Bernie.
There’s a fairly late scene in which Bernie becomes distressed during lunch with a townsperson and starts talking about Jekyll and Hyde phenomena. She makes what seems to be a logical assumption about what’s upsetting him. The movie seems to be drawing a deliberate corollary. If Bernie has been dealing with cognitive dissonance by relying on extreme compartmentalization to make his life work, then maybe his behavior after the incident in the garage is not really that surprising.
On paper, Bernie sounds like a really weird guy, but (in part by exploring his weirdness so closely that it no longer seems weird), the movie makes him astonishingly sympathetic.
Funniest Scene:
I laughed out loud several times during this movie, and I was far from the only one. Sometimes you laugh at a joke. More often, you laugh at the folksy charm of one of the camera-facing Carthaginians.
Early on, I just about died laughing when one of the men explained how Texas could easily be five states, and then described each of the diverse regions while a helpful diagram appeared on the screen.
This particular man was consistently funny and cracked me up throughout the film.
Best Scene:
During his strange scene in the garage, Jack Black really displays some acting chops. Judging by the reaction of the crowd, this scene made many audience members confused and uncomfortable. If Black does somehow pull off a Best Actor nomination, this scene is the clip they should use at awards shows.
The Other Performances:
Shirley MacLaine’s performance isn’t nearly as impressive as Jack Black’s, but that may be because MacLaine always turns in a high caliber performance. She is thoroughly mean and nasty as Widow Nugent. At times she seems over the top and almost cartoonish, but not really in a bad way. She’s definitely masterful at calmly coming across as a train wreck of a human being.
Matthew McConaughey surely has ten thousand times the charisma of any real life small town DA. He really hams it up as Danny Buck. He comes across like one of the cool kids making fun of someone everyone agrees is a jerk through an over-the-top impression. He’s very fun (and easy) to watch, but he’s definitely in scenery-chomping mode.
The Negatives:
This movie is amazingly entertaining, consistently funny, and sometimes thought provoking. But it is also most definitely biased. You can’t possibly watch it and get an objective view of what actually happened in the real life murder case. This movie leaves you (almost) cheering for Bernie and marveling (along with the townspeople) about the way the trial was handled and the verdict. (Of course, even assuming that we’re not getting all of the facts—and I am—charging Bernie with first degree murder seems downright bizarre to me given the nature of what happened.)
The movie sort of pretends it’s being objective by pointing out strengths and flaws of the central characters and including gossipy hearsay that sometimes makes Bernie look better and sometimes makes him look worse.
But the movie is not objective at all. It’s incredibly biased in Bernie’s favor. The only “real” people in it are the ones who support Bernie. All the “bad guys” are actors.
Another weird thing is that at the end of the movie, Mrs. Nugent’s tombstone reveals that the movie took place around 1996. I really would never have guessed that from watching Bernie. There were an awful lot of cell phones that didn’t look very 1996ish. That’s not a big deal, though.
Overall:
It’s hard to explain why this movie is so good because it works better on the big screen than on paper. Bernie is really a phenomenal film. It will make you laugh, make you think, entertain you, and give you the chance to tap your feet along to some incredibly familiar old hymns. Jack Black gives a killer performance here, and the whole movie is just spectacular.