Bernie (3/5 Stars)

There is at least one thing we know for certain. Bernie Tiede shot Majorie Nugent, an eighty three year old woman in the back four times, than stuffed her lifeless corpse in a freezer where it stayed for the next nine months. Why he did it is a lot less clear, and amazingly, whether he deserves to be punished for it is also up for debate in this new “comedy” directed by Richard Linklater and starring Jack Black as the title character.

This story is based on events that took place in the small town of Carthage, Texas in the 1990s. The movie even has most of the townspeople of Carthage cast as themselves. They interact with the movie stars who are playing the principal characters and give interviews directly to the camera at other times. So this movie has a novel structure as a half documentary, half movie. It is more weird than effective though and leaves a plenty to be explained and uncovered. 

The story deserves to be on the same newspaper page as “Man bites dog.” Bernie Tiede was just the nicest guy. Everyone loved him. He was the town’s assistant funeral director. His employer describes him as the most qualified employee he had ever had. He taught sunday school. He sang in the church choir. He directed and starred in town plays. He made a habit of giving gifts to everyone he met. He even would visit widows after the funerals of their husbands and console them with flowers. One such widow was  Majorie Nugent, played here by Shirley Maclaine. In addition to being his ultimate victim, she also happened to be the richest person in town.

Majorie had no friends and had not spoken anyone in her family for years. Her sister plays herself in the movie and describes her as a hateful mean person. Bernie basically became her one and only friend. They started doing everything together, even going on trips and cruises to exotic places, (always first class.) Bernie started doing everything for her. She fired her entire household staff. At one point she rewrote her will to give everything to Bernie. Over time it became just her and Bernie in that big house of hers.

Was it romantic? Well, probably not. Bernie was a closet homosexual. The police found several videotapes of him having sex with local married men when they raided his house. Anyway, one day, for no real reason (to hear Bernie tell it), Bernie killed her. Nobody noticed for nine months. In the meantime, Bernie started giving away all of her money. He bought people cars, financed local businesses, and donated a new wing to the local church. In all, it is estimated that he spent 1 million of her money on the townspeople of Carthage. (He never really got around to paying off his own credit cards with her money though.) Finally Majorie's stockbroker became suspicious and got the police to search the house. They found her stiff corpse in a freezer in the garage. Bernie confessed. When they asked him why he never disposed of the body, he said he wanted to give her a respectable funeral someday.

The town district attorney, Danny Buck, had the case transferred to a different town because he feared Bernie wouldn’t get a fair trial. Townspeople started telling him that a local jury would never convict Bernie. “You people are aware that he confessed, you know,” a tired Danny Buck says. Bernie was convicted and is spending life in prison. He teaches four classes and does a lot of good work in the big house now. Apparently people really like him there too. 

The movie isn’t really that funny. This is mostly because it is rather tough to make a joke out of the actual murder of an elderly woman. Her not being a nice person never quite makes it okay. Bad behavior can usually be mined for laughs without any real problems, but there is a line, and this movie crosses it. 

This movie would make a fine double feature with Jim Carrey’s superior “I Love You, Phillip Morris,” another true story of a closeted homosexual from Texas that was just the nicest guy and sang in the church choir and went and stole millions of dollars. What that movie accomplishes and "Bernie" doesn’t is provide some decent motivation for the events that occurred. I thought I basically understood the Jim Carrey character. I never found out who the real "Bernie" was. Sometimes it seems like we are seeing something on the screen that couldn’t have possibly have happened the way it did. For instance, after shooting the old lady, Bernie cries over her dead body. Did that really happen? If so, how do we know exactly how he reacted? These are vague areas that cry out for a treatment usually reserved for an Errol Morris documentary, which is at least clearer about what is uncertain.

Apparently just after shooting her, Bernie went to the dress rehearsal of the town musical he was directing. Ironically it was a production of the “Music Man,” and Bernie played the lead role as the charming con artist that dupes a small town into giving him a bunch of money. Is Bernie a confidence man? The movie never takes a strong stand on this subject and the possibility is only hinted at. In fact, the only person this movie really does not seem to approve of completely is the district attorney, Danny Buck. Matthew McCounaghey plays him in caricature as a slick egotistical sensationalist. His portrayal is debatable to say the least. Bernie killed a woman. I think we could say Danny Buck was justified in prosecuting him in court over it.

An opportunity missed here is an exploration of the tragic elements of this story. This is the second movie based on a true story about closet homosexuals in Texas that end up doing terrible things. I think you can make an argument that the crimes they commit are linked to the marginalization of homosexuality in Texan society. In “I Love You, Phillip Morris,” the man’s wife bluntly asks a doctor if the gay thing and stealing is related. I would argue that it is in the sense that lying everyday to everyone about an essential part of one’s identity will probably aid a person’s ability to lie in general. What was Bernie doing accompanying little old ladies? He was a very nice man who apparently everyone liked. Did he not deserve love or marriage? Bernie’s reasons for being nice to Majorie Nugent in the first place was that he had noticed how she was so lonely. (The money was there as well but that does not seem like his entire motivation.) As a gay man in Texas, he would have probably known quite a bit about that.