Bernie (2012) dir. Richard Linklater
Starring: Jack Black, Shirley Maclean, Matthew McConaughey

By Alan Bacchus

Bernie is described as a non-resident, who for some reason moved to the small town of Carthage, TX, a place most people want to leave. As a smooth talker naturally he finds a job as a salesman, but in a funeral home. He's very successful, someone meticulous enough to dress the corpses, talented enough to sing lovely gospel songs at the ceremonies and warm-hearted enough to be able to grieve harmoniously with the older widows, but also smooth enough to upsell them on the funeral amenities.

While he charms all the older ladies in town, Bernie sets out to please the bitchiest woman in town, Marge Nugent (Mclean), a widow with some wealth but stingy and vicious. Bernie is a glutton for punishment but manages to cozy up close enough to be her personal assistant. However, Bernie reaches a breaking point, murders the old hag and spends the next nine months covering up her disappearance. A sensationalized trial sets the record straight, but many in the community, despite the opinion of the law, refuse to believe their beloved Bernie is a murderer.

Jack Black as Bernie carries this film as impressively as anything in his body of work. His performance as the affable and charming title character is wonderfully nuanced. The details about Bernie, Nugent and the story are told by the descriptions from the townsfolk in Carthage, real people shown in traditional documentary talking head interviews. The unconventionality of this approach aids in anchoring this story in reality.

Rich in theme, Bernie also becomes a film about identity and deception, specifically for Bernie, who is both open and welcome but also a subtly closeted homosexual gossiped about by the community but not rejected or shunned. The prevalence of the church complements the town’s skepticism of the proven facts of the case. Like their unwavering devotion to God, Carthage refuses to accept even the most heinous and glaring details of Bernie’s case.

Matthew McConaughey plays the town solicitor who prosecutes Bernie. He fits in well with the small town flavour, dressing himself down with unstylish policeman glasses and a cumbersome six gallon hat. He also has a personality as bold and absurd as Bernie’s. And Shirley Maclean is a welcomed return to cinema, chewing her role as the maniacal superbitch Marge Nugent.

But it’s Jack Black’s understated performance that puts the twinkle in this modest little indie gem.

***

Bernie is available on DVD from Alliance Films in Canada.

Fast Food Nation (2006) dir. Richard Linklater
Starring: Greg Kinnear, Wilmer Valderrama, Bobby Cannavale, Catalina Sandino Moreno

***

Richard Linklater’s dramatic adaptation of Eric Schlosser’s non-fiction book was unfairly disregarded by critics and theatre owners. Opening in the fall of 2006, the film received mostly negative reviews and quickly disappeared after only a week or two in limited release. It’s unfair because the film is quite good and worthy of the torch-passing from “Traffic” and “Syriana”.

“Fast Food Nation” is indeed like a third part of an unofficial trilogy of American big business vices. Like “Traffic” and “Syriana” it tells the story of a major widespread problem of middle America, in this case how corporate interests in the fast food business prevails over the health and well-being of the American people.

The film is set in classic middle America, a town called Cody, Colorado – the home of the meat processing plant U.M.D., that makes the hamburgers for the not-so-disguised McDonald’s stand-in “Mickey’s”. Greg Kinnear is perfectly cast as Don, the marketing exec who has come to Cody to investigate why unusually high amounts of fecal matter and e-coli have appeared in their “Big One” burgers. Greg is given a tour of the UMD plant and is shown the process of making the patties, only it’s clean and sanitary and trouble-free which causes Don to investigate deeper into the problem. Intercut with this are several other stories from the town – a group of teenagers working their jobs at Mickey’s with the boredom and who-gives-fuck attitude we expect from the people who serve us our food, and a group of Mexicans immigrants who have recently crossed the border illegally and now work the UMD meat processing assembly line.

Kinnear has two great scenes. The first is a meeting with a cattle rancher played by Kris Kristofferson. He informs Kinnear of the atrocities at the UMD plant – the use of illegal, untrained workers, an assembly-line that moves too fast for its workers at the expense of sanitation and safety and an unethical system of killing the animals. Kristofferson says to Kinnear, “they didn’t show you the kill floor did they?” This refers to the worst shift in the plant, the shift operated by the most desperate of illegal aliens, and which, for the malicious foreman (Bobby Cannavale), becomes a form of punishment for his employees. Kinnear is the wrong man for the job. He’s put in a situation where he is morally compromised. He could take the blindfold off the public’s eyes, or he could look the other way, go back to 9 to 5 and provide of his family. The choice is not that simple.

Ashley, one of the teenagers working the cash at Mickey’s, is given a great scene with Linklater’s pal Ethan Hawke. In a classic Linklater scene, Hawke playing Ashley’s activist uncle, muses on the middle-class attitude of playing it safe, going for money and living an anti-septic life of regret. The speech is perhaps out of place for the film but its great none-the-less and informs Ashley to quit her job and fight back against the man.

The storyline of the Mexican immigrants, Sylvia and Raul, is the heart of the film and played well by “Maria Full of Grace’s” Catalina Sandino Moreno and Wilmer Valderrama. They fight to get into the country for the chance to ‘live the American dream’, yet they ironically find themselves out of the frying pan and into the fire. The third act drops the weight of the American dream flat on their backs – Raul is involved in an accident at the plant which forces Sylvia to take a shift on the “kill floor.” The finale is disturbing and not for all viewers and will likely turn many people off meat for a while.

Together these stories paint a cynical picture of the industry. Perhaps not as dramatic as “Traffic” or “Syriana”, but the story is told in the Linklater way, through character and dialogue as opposed to action or suspense. The attitude of corporate America to the entire industry is summed up with Kinnear’s second great scene - a conversation with Bruce Willis’s character, a UMD’s liaison for Mickey’s. When confronted about the presence of fecal matter in the Mickey’s burgers, Willis succinctly sums it all up, “It’s a sad fact of life, Don, but the truth is we all have to eat a little shit every now and then.” Enjoy.

Buy it here: Fast Food Nation