Bernie

Today's movie came out just last year (2012). Unfortunately the cover for it features Jack Black with his classic dumbass grin. But in actuality, this is not the Jack Black we are all familiar with. This is the true story of Bernie Tiede, a mortician in Carthage, Texas who is well-known and popular in the small town for his (often overwhelming) kindness and generosity. He is so kind, in fact, that he befriends the town's bitchiest widow, Mrs. Nugent. The question is: for how long can his sweet, benevolent nature hold up against her possessive, vicious ways.

Netflix: Yes indeedily

Pick: Double Shot

Mark:  Right off the bat, I’m gonna say that I did like this.  There were a bunch of aspects of the movie that I found endearing or really well-done, but the movie as a whole felt disjointed for me.  Like it didn’t know what it wanted to be right from the get go.  And this is a slow burner of a film.  Wicked fucking slow.

Dylan: I see what you’re saying. It took a very long time in answering its own question, “who is Bernie?” And that got a bit tedious. I enjoyed the sort of biographical format, in which different townspeople introduced the setting and the characters directly to the viewer. One thing I’m still trying to make up my mind about is Jack Black. Whenever he sings, it sounds like Tenacious D, so contrived. Aside from that, he didn't very well in transforming himself into his character. When he really redeemed himself, for me, was in the second half. And the same goes for McConaughey. That guy just irritates me. But the final act is where it really pulled me back in.

Mark:  My thing with this is that it felt like a documentary for the most part, with dramatized reenactments throughout.

Dylan: And did that work for you?

Mark:  In a way, I felt like it hurt it.  I got drawn in by the people being interviewed; they felt so genuine and real when they spoke about the people and the events that took place.  Granted some are actually people from Carthage, Texas, which is where this story takes place, but still.  So for me, Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, and Matthew McConaughey felt fake.  However, I won’t let that take away from what I thought was a great performance by Jack Black.  He’s playing wildly against type in this and he does it really well.  And yeah, he does sing quite a bit, which can be grating, but it’s who Bernie was, so it fits.

Dylan: The interviews worked, up until McConaughey, because he just stood out so much. Whereas the purpose of having the interviews was to reinforce the small-town nature of the story, having him trying to be a part of it just irked me. And I would have liked a little more showing us why/how Mrs. Nugent turned against Bernie. Not to say that the lack of it weakens the story at all. But it seemed like in one scene she was making him the sole beneficiary of her will, and in the next she was yelling at him for not clipping her toenails correctly. Also, when they were talking about all of the stuff Bernie and Mrs. Nugent did together, 1) I didn’t get any sense of that much time going by, and 2) there were several poorly photoshopped pictures of them in Russia, Paris, etc. That irritated me a bit, and could have just as easily been left out.

Mark: No I can agree with you there; I lost track of how long they were together.  Cause it always sounded like Bernie was involved with so much in the town and that took so much of his time, but then they show him on a cruise with Mrs. Nugent.  I would assume that’d take a while.  Fuck, travelling as much as they did would take maybe months.  But they never really explain that.  And the photos, I think they’re supposed to look that bad.  It fits with the way the movie blurs fact and fiction throughout.

Dylan: Yea I mean there was the ‘two years later’ thing, but you’re exactly right. This guy was so wound up in the community, when exactly did he travel all over the world? But anyways, I read that this was supposed to be a dark comedy. I didn’t really see any humor in it. Did you?

Mark: Beyond a couple funny lines, the overall tone of this movie was not comedic.  It was much more depressing than I thought it was going to be.  And I agree, maybe some more scenes from just Marjorie’s perspective would have given us a better understanding of her bipolar nature towards Bernie.  But on a whole, being that this was such a slow burn of a buildup to the murder, we really got inside Bernie’s head.  When he did it, I understood, at least from his perspective, why he did it.

Dylan: Yes, overall I think we get a very solid look into Bernie’s mind. And anything that isn’t shown us through Bernie’s actions are sort of given to us by the townspeople in the interviews. And so, like them, we are sort of audience members watching this whole thing take place. We get the community view of Bernie, and then we sort of see this pressure building in him that he isn’t sure what to do with. And it’s not really like he snapped or went insane. In  fact the scene where it happens is pretty interesting. Immediately afterwards, he runs up to her and acts as if it hadn’t happened. As if someone else took over his body and did it, and then allowed him to return. It was cool, and Black acted it very well.

Mark: You felt bad for the guy, at least I did.  I mean, murder is murder, but you can kinda see where it all came from.  Who he is and what defines him.  And also the interviews help to really give a better sense of where the movie went after the murder, with the trial.  I won’t go into too much detail, as I really liked how this whole process unfolded, but the biggest thing is that the people of Carthage were on Bernie’s side.  And we’ve spent all the time preceding this hearing about how wonderful and great a guy he is from all angles, so it makes sense.  It’s probably one of the more bizarre courtroom dramas I’ve seen.  And I’ve seen a bunch.

Dylan: It’s interesting to think of it as a courtroom drama. It’s definitely a unique movie.

Mark:  It’s so many different things.  It’s really kind of hard to classify what genre it is.  Which helps and hurts it.

Dylan: Well, I liked that about it. There’s not a ton of story here. So the best mystery of it is trying to understand the characters. I don’t really think any of the three main stars deserve an Oscar for their work, but they did a pretty good job. Especially Black. I would definitely recommend it to...people like us. People who watch movies just for the hell of it.

Mark: I think the quick turns with the tone of the film can lose people.  It flicks too much from maybe a little humor, to sad, to depressing, to dark, to light, and it never really finds a consistent place.  But then again, I liked it for being so against type in a lot of things.  Black was the best out of all the actors, really showing that he’s capable of great acting and I hope he does it more often.  And the characters were engaging throughout.  But yeah, you gotta want to watch a bizarre little character study like this.  Cause it’s slow as hell, with little pay off besides just a good story.

Dylan: I don’t know if I agree that is was sad and/or depressing. Maybe at the end. And when it got dark, it wasn’t overwhelming. If anything, that was when the story picked up the pace a little, which kept it balanced. Anyways, aside from that, I was entertained and satisfied. I don’t often watch movies that I haven’t already seen or heard good things about, let alone enjoy them. But this was a good choice.

Mark: Yeah, I was happily surprised.  I didn’t think too much of it when it was first coming out, since Jack Black doesn’t usually do it for me.  And most of his movies are just terrible.  But this one was very good.  Which is why I hope he does more like these.  He won’t, but I can still hope.

Dylan: Trivia? I was looking up the director. He has an interesting filmography, including Dazed and Confused, School of Rock, and Fast Food Nation, among them. Interesting breadth.

Mark: I think the most interesting of Linklater’s films probably has to be A Scanner Darkly.  Now that’s a bizarre film.  But for this movie, there weren't many interesting tidbits about it.  Well, ok, one of the leads had a family member do a cameo.  Which lead and who?

Dylan: Your trivia questions are boring. But I’ll guess a relative of MacLaine, playing one of her grandchildren.

Mark: You sir, can fuck off.  But wrong on both.  It was McConaughey’s mother, Kay.  She played one of the townsfolk being interviewed.  It was the woman with white hair who smoked.  Sitting next to that woman who laughed at most of what she said.

Dylan: Ah yes, okay. Is she from Carthage?

Mark:  Nope.  I have no idea why she played that part.  Maybe because McConaughey needed his mom on set to open his juice boxes.  Beats me.

Dylan: That guy is a jackass.

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Okay, so maybe we were being a little hard on Jack Black's acting abilities. I thought more about it and realized that I really like Kung Fu Panda and Nacho Libre and some of his other work. But it was great to see him in something different. Bernie probably isn't very rewatchable or exciting, but it is a pretty good movie with some good acting and an interesting story. Mark and I both enjoyed it and would recommend it. Live by these words: "underneath the robe you find a man. Underneath the man you find...his nucleus."

Our next movie will be Cosmopolis, another recent low-key release. Unfortunately it stars Robert Pattinson (why can't we seem to avoid ties to Twilight?), so our fingers are crossed that he doesn't ruin the rest of it for us.