Bernie

I've been hearing good things about Bernie, Richard Linklater's 2011 Texas Gothic, and I finally caught up with it and I watched with a smile permanently plastered on my face. Granted, it's not the ideal subject for a comedy, as it's a true story of a man who murders an old lady.

Jack Black is the title character, a pious mortician who moves to Carthage, Texas and soon becomes the most popular man there. He is nice to fault, the perfect grief counselor, participating in all sorts of volunteer activities, such as the church choir and the drama department at the community college.

One of his practices is to visit widows periodically after their husband's deaths, just to make sure they're getting on okay. One of these is Shirley Maclaine, who is the meanest woman in town. She doesn't speak to her family and looks like she's always sucking on a lemon. She agrees to let Bernie in for tea, and before you know it they're bosom buddies. She uses Bernie as a traveling companion, and then hires him as an assistant. He soon finds he's her personal slave, and in a fugue state, takes a gun and shoots her four times in the back. He then puts her in a freezer.

Like I said, not the stuff of a typical comedy. But Linklater has done two great things here. First is casting Black as Bernie. Black, of course, is a great comic actor, but he plays Bernie perfectly straight. This guy is the real thing--after he kills Maclaine, he takes her money and gives it away (telling people she's had a stroke and is in a nursing home). When he's caught he immediately confesses, and mounts a defense that it was not a premeditated murder, even as the zealous D.A. (a very funny Matthew McConnaughey) pursues first degree murder.

The second thing is Linklater's use of town citizens as a Greek chorus. Some of them are actual Carthage citizens, who all supported Bernie in his time of trouble. We get great homespun quotes, like: "They're making it out worse than it really is. He only shot her four times, not five." Or "She would chew your ass out at the drop of a hat. She'd rip you a brand new, 3-bedroom 2-bath, double-wide asshole. No problem." One helpfully breaks down the various sections of Texas, telling us that East Texas has it's own character, and not able to tell us anything about the Panhandle. These talking heads are laugh out loud funny, and make you forget there's a dead woman at the center of the story.

Bernie Tiede was convicted, but in a strange twist was released under the supervision of Linklater himself. Perhaps a sequel is in order, or a sit-com: "The Murderer and the Film Director."