By Morris Dean
Watching the way Margaret Nugent treats Bernie Tiede in the 2011 movie Bernie might be hard to take if you live with someone who to some extent treats you similarly. The movie was directed by Richard Linklater and stars Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine.
Bernie Tiede is a real person, still doing time for the murder of Margaret Nugent. But the nicest fellow. This hugely entertaining "mockumentary" shows you how nice, and Ms. MacLaine's convincing portrayal demonstrates how Bernie's only alternative was probably not to have been so nice that he ever got enmeshed in Margaret's suffocating neediness in the first place.
This particular mockumentary is even better than it might have been anyway because of Linklater's use of locals in several of the parts. Their authenticity seems...authentic, which is a credit to both them and Linklater's direction.
Matthew McConaughey's droll performance as the prosecutor is a delight. No one, not even the real Bernie Tiede, seems to have been particularly upset that Bernie was convicted probably only because the prosecutor successfully sued for a change of venue on the grounds that a jury drawn from the 7,000 people of Carthage, Texas, many of whom knew Bernie and Margaret, would never have convicted Bernie!
You'd have to be humor-deaf or live with someone extremely similar to Margaret not to love the heck out of this movie. Jack Black plays it straight.
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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean
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