Richard Linklater has sort of quietly become one of the best directors working today, and he’s done so with movies like last year’s Me and Orson Welles and this year’s Bernie. It’s actually kind of odd that he isn’t even more well known and respected considering his résumé. Bernie is the type of film he seems to be specializing in more these days: you don’t think much of it at first but then it sneaks up on you and knocks you to the floor.
He administers a terrific performance from Jack Black as the enigmatic and multi-faceted Bernie, a man we’re not sure what to make of until the end of the film. Linklater does an amazing job establishing a sense of place in this Texas town, a strange (to me) environment that produces the strange (to probably everyone) character of Bernie, and contributes to all his repression, guilt, religious sensibilities, and genuine sweetness. Like Black’s performance, the film works simultaneously as this grand, over the top story but with a subtle undercurrent of menace and suppressed fury.
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