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"One of the most amiable and least predictable of American directors, Austin-based indie Richard Linklater&amp;nbsp;follows his deft period reconstruction \u201CMe and Orson Welles\u201D and animated Philip K. Dick yarn \u201CA Scanner Darkly\u201D with an exercise in regional humor. \u201CBernie\u201D is a true-life Texas tall-tale about a murderous funeral director and the little town of Carthage that loved him.The Ballad of Bernie Tiede is also a vehicle for&amp;nbsp;Jack Black&amp;nbsp;(who gave Linklater his career performance nine years ago in \u201CSchool of Rock\u201D). Introduced dressing and grooming a corpse for an audience of would-be morticians, Bernie is the town goody-goody \u2014 he literally puts the best face on death while taking it as his mission to comfort the newly bereaved. Elderly women are his specialty, but he nearly meets his match in the person of Carthage\u2019s richest, meanest widow, and owner of the local bank, Marjorie Nugent.Played by a poker-faced&amp;nbsp;Shirley MacClaine&amp;nbsp;(who doesn\u2019t bother to feign an East Texas accent), Marjorie instantly rejects Bernie, but ultimately succumbs to his placid persistence. After winning her confidence (and power of attorney), escorting her on vacation trips to European spas and Broadway shows, enduring numerous temper tantrums, and performing all manner of humiliating chores, Bernie finally loses it. It\u2019s practically a country-western ballad. The setting is not quite Bonnie and Clyde country (their Carthage was in Missouri) but close enough. He shoots her four times in the back then conceals her corpse in a freezer for nine months, using her money to the benefit of the town while pretending she\u2019s in a hospital out of state.Black\u2019s Bernie is a study in bland ambiguity: Christian or con man, straight or gay, gigolo or caretaker, unbelievably sincere or brilliantly duplicitous, hymn-singing hypocrite or scheming Samaritan,&amp;nbsp;Robin Hood or Jack the Ripper? To add to the confusion, Black gets to sing, dance (his \u201CSeventy Six Trombones\u201D is a virtual audition tape) and blubber like a baby.&amp;nbsp;Linklater is less interested in his hero\u2019s psychology than that of the town. Just about everyone hated Marjorie and loved Bernie. His trial has to be moved to a hamlet two counties away because the showboat district attorney Danny Buck Davidson (ripely played by Texas native Matthew McConaughey) knows that despite Bernie\u2019s tearful confession, he\u2019ll never get a conviction \u2014 especially since, at least in the movie, one of his most damning lines of questioning concerns the alleged killer\u2019s knowledge of the appropriate wine to serve with fish.Repetitive but not tiresome, Bernie is shot as a mock documentary \u2014 with the action annotated or described by a chorus of&amp;nbsp;gossipy&amp;nbsp;townspeople, many of them played by Bernie\u2019s actual neighbors. This colorful discourse makes for the movie\u2019s richest element. \u201CThat old heifer turned down loans just for a hobby,\u201D says one of Marjorie. \u201CThey had more tattoos than teeth,\u201D is how another characterizes the jury that heard Bernie\u2019s case. The material brings Linklater near the realm of&amp;nbsp;the&amp;nbsp;Coen brothers; the methodology, as well as the material, takes him even closer to the world of documentarian&amp;nbsp;Errol Morris. Herein lies a paradox. The&amp;nbsp;bilious&amp;nbsp;Coens would typically have treated the Passion of Bernie as a subject for grotesque farce; the habitually facetious Morris could have brought a ruthless defamiliarization to bear on the&amp;nbsp;setting. Linklater\u2019s attitude is none at all. Familiarity breeds no contempt, and consequently,&amp;nbsp;\u201CBernie\u201D&amp;nbsp;lacks the edge of malice one might&amp;nbsp;reasonably&amp;nbsp;expect from so&amp;nbsp;nasty&amp;nbsp;a tale.Read more J. Hoberman in Movie Journal[content:advertisement-center]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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