Australia: 16th August, 2012 USA DVD Release 21st August, 2012
Other Countries: Release Dates
The title of the
April
2012 article in the New York Times
says it all, “How My Aunt Marge Ended Up in the Deep Freeze . . .” The article written by Joe Rhodes, the
nephew of Marjorie Nugent, (the frozen Aunt), recounts the true-life story of
much loved Bernie Tiede, assistant funeral director, and affluent and mean
spirited Marjorie in the tiny town of Carthage Texas.
If you weren’t
told it was true, you wouldn’t believe it.
And even as the end credits of the mockumentary film “Bernie” roll, you sit
there still mesmerised by the attitudes of the townsfolk, who just can’t
believe that in 1996 their beloved Bernie turned murderer. Even if he was a killer, the consensus of the
townsfolk is he should be given a medal not life.
Directed by
Richard Linklater, the film chronicles, in documentary style, Carthage’s
Bernie (Jack Black) befriending Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine), whom
Linklater labours to assure us is one of the nastiest human beings you would
ever meet. A friendship develops between
the 39-year-old Bernie and the 81-year-old millionaire Marjorie and they spend
the next few years travelling the world and living the high life on her dime. Eventually, she even writes him into her will
and signs over her power of attorney.
Marjorie, who
had blossomed during the friendship, increasingly turns more possessive and demanding with Bernie, until one day he snaps, shooting her and disposing of her
body in a freezer under the frozen vegetables and pot pies. For the next nine months he then continues as
normal with his life, creating ever-changing excuses as to her unavailability,
whilst ploughing through two million dollars of her money.
So popular is
Bernie, that Danny Buck Davidson, (Matthew McConaughey), the district attorney,
faces an uphill battle to convict if the trial is held in Carthage, uttering one of the classic film lines
during the trial, “Oh, he’s an angel, all right. An angel of death!”
Says nephew Joe
Rhodes, ‘I think my visit to the “Bernie” set may
have been more unsettling to some of the cast and crew than it was to me. As
Skip Hollandsworth, who co-wrote the screenplay, introduced me around, a few
people clearly weren’t sure how to react. Should they apologize for making a comedy
about my aunt’s murder? Should they say they were sorry for my loss? I told
them not to worry about it. “Bernie’s not the first one who thought about
killing her,” I told them. “He’s just the first one who went through with it.”
Like all black
comedies, the comedy in Bernie is that this is something about which you should
not be laughing. But when you have
real-life characters sprouting lines such as "There are people in town,
honey, that woulda shot her for five dollars," you know you have
permission to laugh at this tabloid story. And if you don’t read tabloid, go
anyway just to watch the three leads bring their ‘A’ game to this display of
humanity at its most bizarre.
