Bernie: Good Standing Citizen With A Little Blemish

Bernie

Directed By: Richard Linklater

Written By: Skip Hollandsworth and Richard Linklater

Starring: Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, and Matthew McConaughey

Director of Photography: Dick Pope, Editor: Sandra Adair, Production Designer: Bruce Curtis, Original Music: Graham Reynolds

            The opening scene of Bernie, a not-so-dark comedy from Richard Linklater about a dark subject, begins with Jack Black as the titular character giving a lecture. His tone is gentle and warm, his mannerisms quirky but spirited, and his instructions simple to follow. In fact, it takes a few seconds before a pull out by the camera reveals Bernie is standing in front of a dead body, and preparing it for a funeral. Linklater’s tone is frothy in its lightness; his camera puts the grotesque in close-up, but often under soft lighting that makes it feel gentle. So what is a gentle man doing murder for?

            And Bernie is certainly one of the more heartwarming comedies about a terrible crime, and a true one. Set in the town of Carthage, Texas (East Texas is quite different from the oil men and weirdos of the other parts, a local tells us), Linklater spins together documentary and recreation about one man whose story is too good to not be on film, the type Hitchcock would have ate up with giddy delight. It’s strange and odd in all the ways one would never expect, and Black makes us fall in love with his adorable character, even if he does something very, very wrong.

Into The Abyss: Searching the Eyes For Life Before Death Comes

Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life

Written and Directed By: Werner Herzog

Featuring: Michael Perry, Jason Burkett

Director of Photography: Peter Zeitlinger, Editor: Joe Bini; Music: Mark Degli Antoni

Rated: PG-13 for thematic material and a few shocking images.

            In an interview earlier this year, Werner Herzog mentioned that almost every film he has ever directed could have been called Into the Abyss. The abyss in Mr. Herzog’s filmography has been both one directed by the physical landscapes his characters often inhabit, but often more the psychological torment they go through while on these journeys. Is it Fitcarraldo’s own madness that drives him to carry the boat over the mountain, or the jungle that commands him? Is Timothy Treadwell simply insane, or does the isolation push him over the edge? And what of that penguin, walking toward certain death alone in Antarctica? Especially as a documentarian, Mr. Herzog has often found the most unique subjects and, through his own philosophical inquiries, transforms what is not just a re-telling of stories but a piercing look into human’s most fundamental emotions. 

            And so, for his film actually titled Into the Abyss, Mr. Herzog has chosen what actually seems like a subject not to his tastes: a story of a Texas Death Row Inmate, his partner serving a life sentence, and the crimes they committed. Mr. Herzog has never been a political figure, and the issue of the death penalty is one that doesn’t interest him. And Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life is in many ways his least Herzogian feature, as the director restrains himself occasionally to simply tell a tale not too different to In Cold Blood.