Bernie (2012)
Directed by Richard Linklater
In small-town Texas, affable and popular mortician Bernie Tiede strikes up a friendship with Marjorie Nugent, a wealthy widow well known for her sour attitude. When she becomes controlling and abusive, Bernie goes to great lengths to remove himself from her grasp.
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Linklater intercuts Tiede's story with fond reminiscences of Tiede from actual Carthage residents (and a handful of familiar Texan character actors), only adding to the film's pleasantly oddball vibe, which intersects at the corner of Sunset Blvd.
It might have been fun if Linklater had been a bit more inventive—if he had made a sort of East Texas “Sunset Boulevard”—but he seems to feel that he would have betrayed his corner of Texas if he had made too much up.
(Perhaps not coincidentally, MacLaine made her screen debut in another film involving a quirky small town and a dead body, Alfred Hitchcock's hilariously genteel black comedy "The Trouble with Harry."
It's hard not to evaluate a film that deals with small-town American life on whether or not it is condescending to its subject or sympathetic toward it—see the discourses around the Coen brothers ' Fargo , Christopher Guest comedies, and David Byrne 's Texas-set True Stories, all of which Bernie shares some DNA with.
When Black's simply singing along to "Love Lifted Me" in his car, or doe-eyeing his way through a number from "Guys and Dolls," you have a singing actor of extremely wily comic chops.
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I couldn’t help but feel like it was a cross between Steven Soderbergh’s Bubble and The Informant, with its almost dim-witted charm blending perfectly with the more serious notions being addressed.
Instead, Bernie plays like In Cold Blood — if it had been directed by Christopher Guest.
It's like "In Cold Blood" written by Flannery O'Connor instead of Truman Capote.
He sings “Just as I Am” and “Amazing Grace” without a wink, without a hint of the Tenacious D/”School of Rock” metal belter you know he pines to be.
Black plays Bernie as a classic small-town sissy, an effeminate bachelor who fusses over his deceased customers (à la Mr. Joyboy in The Loved One) and organizes little-theater musical productions.
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As a black comedy, Bernie could use a little more snap; the genre of Ace In The Hole and Dr. Strangelove calls for a satirical conviction that runs counter to Linklater’s relaxed wit.
Cowriter (with Texas Monthly's Skip Hollandsworth)/director Richard Linklater ("Before Sunrise," "Me and Orson Welles") has found his 'truth is stranger than fiction' story, and he's mined gold by structuring it like a town gossip version of "Citizen Kane."