Bernie

Released 26th April 2011, Bernie follows the true story of Bernie Tiede; Carthage’s (Texas) favourite community helper and his deteriorating relationship with Marjorie Nugent. Whilst it is certainly a two way stream, this film already bears a niche concept of tackling a circumstance of coercive control where the victim is a male. For what has been a progressive decade in combatting abusive relationships, males have been disregarded despite making up 32.9% of domestic abuse victims. With that said, this film focuses more on the financial and psychological side of abuse and how it subtly influences people; good or bad.

Jack Black brings his regular comedic chops and personality to Bernie Tiede whilst also managing to convey his change through extremely subtle facial actions and poise. I’m not sure if anyone else could have provided Bernie with so much charisma and radiating joy yet such gentleness too. If anything, it would have been more engaging if we saw more of Bernie’s personal post-abuse affects as he mostly reverts back to his old self once he gets out. Shirley MacLaine and Matthew McConaughey are absolutely stellar as the film’s antagonists; performing Marjorie Nugent and Danny Buck Davidson, respectively. Marjorie illustrates the abuser of the relationship and as stated, she uses vocalisation and flinching physicalisation to separate herself from Bernie; performance choices which really help to convey her insincerity to him.

Meanwhile Danny is used to highlight society’s oversight of abuse and also oppressive ideas of what a man should be in the eyes of society. There are many other cast members, but they are used in a documentary style where they are interviewed about Bernie and Marjorie’s relationship. That said, everyone (and Carthage) display a spectrum of personality through their responses to the questions as well as enhancing the narrative. The soundtrack wasn’t noticeably bad but not too memorable either. Overall Bernie manages to effectively convey an ill-represented subject topic in a way that caters to its tragic source material.