When anyone living in the North American city of Carthage [www.carthagetexas.com] dies, they come to the The Leggett Funeral Home, run by Don Leggett (played by the late Rick Dial 1955-2011, to whose memory the film is dedicated). Don employs a podgy, amiable, moustached man called Bernie Tiede (Jack Black) who arrives from nowhere and walks into the job of being coffin salesman, religious adviser, singer of Amazing Grace, and comforter of old women.

Carthage - 'the Gas Capital of the United States' - is described in detail in the film. It's very much a character, housing attractions including the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame [www.carthagetexas.us/halloffame/], and the city's focal point - the Bar BQ & Catfish Burger restaurant. Bernie eats there. So does district attorney (local government criminal prosecutor) Danny 'Buck' Davidson (Matthew McConaughey).

Carthage is portrayed as a conservative place. A crowd, for example, is described by one character as 'like flies on a coon-dog'. It's not clear if the film is a snobbish and distorted caricature of one set of North Americans (ignorant Southerners) by another (enlightened Northerners) laughing in a clever way at people they despise as stupid, or whether that's how Carthage is. It seems an unlikely place to exist as portrayed in the real world, but there is a real Carthage. And there is a real Bernhardt 'Bernie' Tiede.

[According to the Texas Tribune (http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/texas-prisons/inmates/bernhardt-tiede-ii/99744/) Bernhardt Tiede II was born on 2 August 1958; is in prison at the Telford Unit of the Texas prison system for a murder committed on 19 November 1996. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhardt_%22Bernie%22_Tiede has several local press story links; according to these his sentence is life imprisonment.]

Bernie Tiede arranges the funeral of banker Mr Nugent. He befriends the - immensely rich - widow Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine), a woman with no friends and a reputation for being sour and unfeeling. She warms to Bernie and they become close companions, travelling together to many places round the world including Russia and New York. Her stockbroker Lloyd Hornbuckle (Richard Robichaux) is suspicious of Bernie, particularly when Mrs Nugent changes her will in favour of Bernie, and gives him power of attorney - enabling him to spend her money.

Gradually Mrs Nugent fires her staff and gets Bernie to work less at the undertaker. He becomes a slave to her, doing every tiny task and having to respond without delay to her increasingly eccentric and unpleasant demands. He snaps, shoots her 4 times in the back, and puts her body in a freezer. It's concealed till the crime is discovered 9 months later and Sheriff Huckabee (Brandon Smith) arrests him.

The storytelling of the film is cleverly done both in the method - using narrators and dividing cards - and the ethics. Many of the citizens are narrators in the film. They give their opinions about what Bernie was like, and tell the story. The film is also divided into sections, announced by traditional handwritten cards. 'Was Bernie Gay?' starts a section on whether he was - as Don Leggett puts it - 'light on his loafers'. A woman points out that Bernie doesn't pay attention to 'women of his own age'. But the many friends Bernie makes among the population of this evidently conservative city are ready, exceptionally, to overlook his possible homosexuality.

The ethics of murder and how the perception of a particular murderer and victim can distort them are a strong element of the film, and done in a subtle way. The first chunk of the film - up to the shooting - is full-on Bernie Tiede. Jack Black's Bernie sings, he dances, he smiles, cuddles old women, finds the right word for every kind of death, picks up teenage bodies from a car smash with kind words. There's lots of comedy. His face is seemingly never off the screen. Everyone loves him. Citizen after citizen, men, women, attest to his goodness, and the badness of Mrs Nugent - who is portrayed in two dimensions as bad, man and dangerous to know, but with sudden lapses into sentimentality. The district attorney Danny Buck comes across as a grade-one nutter, a fanatic searching for any kind of crime in a ridiculous way, a nerd, pandering continually to camera crews.

It's Danny Buck who is the moral pivot of the film. After the murder, as citizens barrack him to go easy on Bernie, he points out calmly that a woman - monster or not - has been murdered. The film's attention switches to him - he becomes the new central character and Bernie Tiede recedes to the background. Danny Buck ticks off vicar Rev Woodard (Larry Jack Dotson) for preaching to the congregation to pray for Bernie in a way - in his opinion - which takes away from the dead woman's entitlement to fairness, to justice - and to the benefits of the Christianity which the church espouses.

The court scene is handled with an unexpected - in a film which specialises in vivid depictions - coming to earth. The prosecutor's speech is expectedly robust and tricksy - to a stereotypical interbred country jury - but it expresses a way of looking at the character of Bernhardt Tiede which is completely different from the one that the film has built up. Here is, simply, a murderer. Defence barrister Clifton 'Scrappy' Holmes (Brady Coleman) makes his points, but they seem flimsy. It's a superbly constructed and executed scene, upending all expectations with a clear sense of truth expressed, and justice. A sudden jolt of truth.

Cast Credits: IMDB: www.imdb.com/title/tt1704573/fullcredits

Cast Credits: IMDB: www.imdb.com/title/tt1704573/fullcredits

END

John Park

reviewed Monday 26 September 2011 / Press screening / NFT1, National Film Theatre, London UK

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012

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