Jack Black, whose career was built on getting deep inside the skin of his characters, arguably reaches the pinnacle of his performances as Bernie Tiede in "Bernie" — based on actual events that happened in small-town Texas 17 years ago.
Directed by Richard Linklater (Black's second team-up with him since "The School of Rock" in 2003), "Bernie" is a fictional documentary, sticking to the bare facts while speculating on unrevealed emotional agendas. The story of a mortician who took up with a wealthy, decades-older local widow and was later accused of killing her in cold blood, "Bernie" is by turns sinister, funny and very sad. The trial made headlines in the United States before it was forgotten. According to the film, though, locals still talk about it as if it happened yesterday.
Bernie was in his late 30s and single, the most popular man and assistant funeral director in a town whose demographics were dominated by about-to-die old men and about-to-be-widowed "DLOL (Dear Little Old Ladies)." Bernie, an out-of-state transfer with a mortician's degree, was an immediate hit. Everyone loved him. In an interview with The Japan Times, Black gave his own description of Bernie (he had visited the man in prison before Linklater started shooting the film): "Bernie is this very personable and charismatic guy. He wasn't the big and loud kind of charismatic, actually he's very, very shy. But there's a magnetism to him and he has a knack for getting people to like him in an easy-going way. Richard and I thought he would be great movie material. Not many movies are made about likable murderers and Bernie is just the sweetest, most pleasant guy anyone could hope to meet. There was just this one horrible incident in his life among all the nice-ness and I thought that was very compelling."