London Film Fest 2011 Day 12 - BERNIE

“It’s not as bad as people say; he only shot her four times, not five.”

Bernie Tiede was a good, god-fearing man, who went out of his way to please.  His patient, caring manner was an asset as a funeral director, and his willingness to throw himself into small-town life made him beloved by his fellow residents of Carthage, Texas.  So much so, that when it was revealed that Bernie had shot Marjorie Nugent, four times in the back, none of the townsfolk believed him guilty. Oh, they knew he shot her dead, for sure.  But they figured that someone as mean-spirited as Marjorie must have incited Bernie to take leave of his senses for a moment.  Tragically for Bernie, prosecuting attorney Danny Buck, knew full well that despite a full confession, four bullets in the back, and Bernie’s ample use of Marjorie’s money, he wasn’t going to get a conviction. And so, he got the trial moved a mere 44 miles away to Saint Augustine.

The wonderful thing about Richard Linklater’s new fictionalized retelling of Bernie’s true story, is that he allows us to fall in love with Carthage, its quirky inhabitants, and with Bernie himself. So that by the end of the movie, even though we’re sitting in an urban art-house cinema, we too can’t quite believe that any humane jury would convict Bernie, and sit fearful that those no-good inbred St Augustinians won’t do him right.   Because this movie isn’t so much a character-driven crime drama as a Coen Brothers style love-letter to small-town Southern life.   We luxuriate in the broad accents, marvel at the cast-iron certainty of the town gossips as they declare that Bernie FOR A FACT was or wasn’t this or that, and laugh at their incomprehension of Austin hippies.  It’s hard to think of any recent use of faux-documentary talking heads that was as successful and hilarious as Linklaters use of  the Carthage townsfolk – narrating, commenting on, and judging the story at each twist and turn. 

Because I warmed so much to these people, and started to identify so strongly with them, the movie turned from what could’ve been a real downer into effectively a rather heart-warming experience. On one level this was a movie about really nasty aspects of human nature – a man so wanting to be liked that he wills himself into an emotional prison, and a woman delighting in his pain.  But rather than being brought down by the depiction of a bizarrely, horribly, sado-masochistic relationship (emotionally, not sexually, that is!), I left the cinema positively full of faith in humanity. Because Carthage was a small town where ordinary townsfolk new just what was what, and a good guy was  a good guy, even if blighted by a sudden act of rage.

All of which tells you that native East Texan, Richard Linklater, is pretty much in love with Carthage, and doesn’t really make much attempt to give a balanced view of Bernie. Or maybe he does, but the truth really is that Bernie was a good guy, despite the slightly suspect love of the high life that Marjorie bought him. By now, I’m so complicit in the “free Bernie” campaign I can’t even tell. All I know is that Linklater somehow managed to capture both the black humour and the tragedy at the core of Bernie’s need to please.  I laughed a lot, I was fascinated, and I won’t soon forget the tale. Massive praise also to all three leads.  Jack Black gives a more modulated performance than is typical in his mainstream films, as the gregarious, needy Bernie. Shirley Maclaine as mean old Marjorie is just an acting masterclass. Look at the scene where she listens to Bernie sing a duet in a theatrical rehearsal, imagining him singing a love song to her. Her face shows a cynical old woman melting.  And finally, you have to hand it to Matthew McConaughey, an actor who is brilliant in inverse proportion to his screentime.  Banality in mediocre rom-coms turns into piquant cameos – first in TROPIC THUNDER, and now as the fame-hungry prosecutor Danny Buckland. 

BERNIE played Los Angeles and London 2011.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 6 - ANOTHER YEAR

Mike Leigh returns to the Festival with a typical Mike Leigh product: heightened social realism mixing comedy and tragedy - finely observed, and improvised by the actors he often works with. The resulting film is a quality product if less memorable than, say, HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, and less scarring than SECRETS AND LIES.

The movie is set around a couple called Tom and Jerry (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen) - solidly middle-class, nice, cheerful, and happily married. They have a 30 year old son called Joe (Oliver Maltman) who through the course of the year finds a cheerful Poppy-lite girlfriend called Katie (Karina Fernandez). They all get on really well. This stands in sharp contrast with the people who surround them and who are, by turns, taken under their wing. As the movie opens we see Jerry, a counsellor, deal with a depressed woman called Janet (a cameo from Imelda Staunton). And then, the person who really anchors the work is Lesley Manville, playing a lonely middle-aged woman called Mary, who consoles herself by drinking too much and constructing an unrealistic fantasy that Joe will ask her out. Finally, we meet Tom's elder brother Ronnie (David Bradley), recently bereaved, living numb in a grey house.

As we pass through the year, we see that Tom and Jerry are kind and sociable and create a lot of fun around them. They are constantly telling people to sit down and have a cup of tea and asking them if they are okay. But, in essence, the people who surround them aren't okay - they are miserable - miserable and pretending, badly, not to be. This is best shown by a superb little end-scene for the character Jack, played by Phil Davis. His wife is ill. Jerry asks if he's okay and he says "Well we try not to let it get us down", but then looks to the ground forlorn.  So, how far is the friendship of Terry and June enabling that delusion, by blithely making cups of tea - and how far is it making it worse by presenting these poor folk with an image of smug domestic bliss? To that end, I found ANOTHER YEAR problematic, but I think I was meant to. I also found it, despite the laughs, a profoundly depressing, if well-made, film.

Additional tags: Michele Austin, Karina Fernandez, Martin Savage, David Bradley, Oliver Maltman, Gary Yershon

ANOTHER YEAR played Cannes and Toronto 2010 and opens in the UK on November 5th. It opens in the Netherlands on November 11th; in France on December 22nd; in the US on December 31st and in Germany on January 27th 2011.

ME AND ORSON WELLES - thin

British thespian Christian McKay is charismatic, enigmatic and pitch perfect in his portrayal of legendary theatre and film director, Orson Welles. He is all thick, creamy charm and wonderfully, audaciously, self-confident. You want to be in his presence, to be caught up in the excitement of pulling off a daring production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar against all the odds. McKay's Welles convinces us that art matters, and that excellence is possible, and that if the artist wants to charm a little radio secretary or two in the meantime, well, who is he to be pinned down by conventional bourgeois morality? All hail, the brilliant wunderkind Orson Welles, and woe betide you if you dare to question his ducal rights.

The tragedy of ME AND ORSON WELLES is that Richard Linklater has not fashioned a framing device interesting enough to hold our attention when Welles is off screen. Indeed, Welles must be turning in his grave to see his grand personality reduced to romantic-comedy fodder. For, in this ill-advised film, we are asked to see Welles through the eyes of a naive, romantic schoolboy (Zac Efron with his first decent haircut), who gets a bit-part in Welles' production. For much of the movie's runtime, the schoolkid follows Welles around, filching his best pick-up lines and moving in on his PA (Claire Danes) only to get ideas above himself and mess it all up. We are supposed to care about this young kid losing his illusions about what it takes to get ahead, and worse still, to care about his romance with a drippy wannabe writer (Zoe Kazan) with eyes so wide she could be a Disney heroine.

All of this is so much nonsense. What we really care about is Welles and his genius and his relationship with long-time collaborators - his producer John Houseman (Eddie Marsan) and his best friend, Joe Cotton. The movie sags when Welles is off-screen. Frankly, I would've put up with just seeing him schmooze chicks, but what would've been superb would've been a portrayal of how he worked. Sadly, other than one seen where he discusses The Magnificent Ambersons, we get precious little of that.

The resulting film is too frail a frame upon which to hang a biopic of such a great man. It is likely to disappoint all potential audiences. The HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL crowd will no doubt be annoyed to see their pet outshone by an older, less handsome man, and the cineastes will be teased but not satiated by McKay's performance. Little scene gems - a big band led by Jools Holland with Eddi Reader as the singer - are wasted on such a thin film.

ME AND ORSON WELLES played Toronto 2008 but has only just been released in the USA and the UK. Never a good sign.