Joshua Reviews Richard Linklater’s Bernie [SXSW 2012]

Within the film world, particularly if you happen to be a director, it’s tough to stay both on top of the mountain, and on top of your game.

Over the past few years, director and beloved Austinite Richard Linklater has either seen middling response to his features, or entire projects cease to exist (RIP Liars (A-E)), making his new film, the SXSW premiere Bernie all the more intriguing.   The prodigal son returns to Texas to tell one of the most interesting true crime stories that the state can offer, and in his own esoteric way?

Well, unfortunately, it sounds far more interesting than it ultimately ended up being.

Starring Jack Black, the film tells the story of Bernie, a mortician who sparks a relationship with an aggressive and wealthy widow, only to take her life and attempt to spend the rest of his days keeping this news hidden.   Well, thanks to a nosey District Attorney, things begin to unravel and we become privy to one of the more darkly comedic tales seen in quite some time.   In the guise of a Christopher Guest-like mockumentary, the film is an unfunny attempt at dark comedy that becomes more pandering and aggressively laugh-less as the overly long film runs its course.

Linklater is arguably the film’s greatest aspect here.   Imbuing the film with a great charm, the film may be sans laughs, but it’s not sans charm. Structurally, the film is Linklater’s Spinal Tap, and directorially, his camera is as live as it has been in years.   The love for the locale is palpable from his frame, and the interview sequences he plugs in are often times the only true comedic beats the film ever truly nails.   And boy, do they more often than not nail it perfectly.

However, the performances are where the film falters.   Matthew McConaughey is revelatory here as DA Danny Buck Davidson, playing the character just over the top enough to be entertaining, but still collected enough to just charm your pants off.   Basically portraying himself if he never got into acting, instead taking up law enforcement, he is the right blend of charming and yet undermining that the character becomes something a little less like the caricatures the rest of the film features.

Star Jack Black is tediously off here, playing the character with only one note, as if he were Nacho from Nacho Libre, just English and charmingly feminine. The script doesn’t give him much to do, but the character has little to no palpable arc, and even less emotional. Shirley MacLaine is fine, but equally one note, and ultimately wasted here.   The interview sequences are easily the film’s greatest aspect, and ultimately make you wish Linklater had simply gone full documentary, giving this story the justice that it so rightly deserves.

Bernie is stylistically a step in the right direction for Linklater, a filmmaker who has seemingly been on autopilot since A Scanner Darkly, but everything else comes off as twee and immensely slight.   You never once feel sorrow for this man or his plight, instead feeling perfectly just in applauding his ultimate demise. Horribly anti-climatic, the film is saved by an entertaining turn from McConaughey, an actor who takes this film on his shoulders, and nearly keeps it from drowning.