Review of Bernie (2012) by Ethan A — 02 Mar 2013

(Spoilers follow) It's Texas, but not as we know it, in Richard Linklater's 'Bernie', a highly entertaining take on the true-life story of Bernie Tiede (Jack Black). Tiede is an undertaker (sorry, funeral director) who is so beloved by the people of the small town of Carthage that they refuse to believe he should be held responsible for the murder of local tyrant Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine) despite the fact that he confesses to the crime. The only person who wants to pursue the case, for purely selfish reasons of his own, is District Attorney Danny Buck Davidson (Matthew McConaughey), and pursue it he does.

Black is in career-best form as Bernie, never letting us lose sight of the human being beneath the eccentricities and skilfully ensuring that the character never becomes a fey stereotype. The caricatures are generally reserved for the more archetypal Texans that surround him (Danny Buck is the prime example, but the film is populated with people bearing too-good-to-be-true handles like Scrappy Holmes and Lloyd Hornbuckle). Linklater has a brilliant eye for the eccentricities of small-town behaviour, and the film is peppered with hilarious 'talking-head' sequences in which the people of Carthage (some played by actors, some apparently playing themselves) regale us with their own wonderfully skewed take on events as they unfold.

The film takes on a surprising amount of heft in the final act when it becomes an indictment of a broken legal system that comes to the wrong verdict (Tiede is convicted of first-degree murder despite the fact that there is no evidence of pre-meditation) for the most disturbing of reasons. The residents of the neighbouring town of San Augustine (where the trial is moved because Tiede is too popular in his own parish) convict him for being different to them; for having different tastes to them, for being more refined than them, for (shock, horror!) possibly being gay.

'Bernie' is an excellent, profoundly humanistic film. Yes, it's filled with oddballs and weirdos, but (with the possible exception of the self-serving Danny Buck) we're never laughing AT them. We're laughing because there is no other sane response when faced with life's absurdities, and Bernie Tiede has seen more than most. And we can laugh because, even as the cell doors slam shut on him, we see that, despite everything, his spirit remains unbroken. This is a good man who did a bad thing in a moment of madness, but perhaps if the world were a saner place he'd now be back in society doing what he loves to do best; making it a better place for other people. (Seen on Blu-Ray - 23 February 2013).