So, I watched a good movie today. Shockingly it was a Jack Black movie, titled 'Bernie'. It's about an affable funeral director, the titular Bernie, who is a paragon of virtue and held in the highest esteem by the community.
This lovely man tries to befriend his polar opposite, the town's pariah. She's an eighty year old millionaire, and even her own family no longer speaks to her. She's racist, and bitter. One of her first scenes shows her attacking one of her gardeners with a broom when he tries to hand her the bill. Bernie brings her flowers after the death of her husband. He stops by daily to make sure she's handling her tragedy well.
She warms up to him. They start spending time together, a lot of time. Eventually, he's the closest human contact she has. Every second of his time becomes precious. She fights him when he leaves to direct the church choir. If he doesn't show up for their lunch dates two hours early, he's late. She tells him to switch to part-time at his job as a funeral director, she'll pay him to be her caretaker.
He does.
They start taking vacations together, traveling. Every trip is fraught with tension. He can't do anything right. He's forgotten her pills in the room, he should know she needs to take them before eating. He's off doing his own thing, she calls him and tells him he needs to leave NOW to pick up her dress from the dry cleaners.
She berates him constantly, picks at him over every action he takes.
Not good enough, how could you treat me like this. You're going to leave me like EVERYONE ELSE.
They get into an argument, and he tries to leave. She closes the gate to her estate so he can't drive out.
He kills her.
Shoots her in the back four times, and then cries over her dead body. He asks God to forgive him, asks what He wants him to do.
So he puts her in the freezer. He pretends that she's still alive. She's of a curmudgeonly sort, nobody questions why she isn't seen out in the community. Her children and grandchildren sued her years ago and they haven't spoken since. He tells everyone who asks that she had a stroke and she's in a care facility, but she doesn't want anyone to know because she thinks someone will try to assume control of her estate. He starts giving out money to anyone who asks for it. He donates 100,000 to the church. He pays off auto loans, mortgages. He funds a new business starting in town square.
Eventually he's found out. The DA brings him up on charges of first degree murder. And the town goes wild.
Every member of the town stops him, tells him he must be mistaken. That if they're on the jury, they'll vote to acquit. She was a bitch, she deserved to die.
And that's where this movie lost me; or hooked me, depending on how you look at it.
The funny thing is, this movie is based on a true story, and some of the actors aren't actually actors. They are residents of the real town that this happened in. It was a court case that made headlines, one of the first times a prosecution had to change jurisdictions in order to get a fair trial that wasn't in favor of the defendant.
Admittedly, I watched this movie because I was already familiar with this case. I knew that she was a mean woman and he was a nice man, that he killed her and went to jail. I didn't know that hundreds of people protested and rallied to protect a known and admitted murderer because the victim was someone they didn't like very much.
The writers and the director did a good job, and they chose good actors. Bernie is very likable and sympathetic, and Margi (the old woman) is completely wretched. Shirley Maclaine did a great job of portraying someone who is terrible because she has no reason not to be. You can see in her character someone who has always had money to throw at her problems. The relationship between her and Bernie was a classic case of psychological abuse. As soon as she saw how soft he was, how easy to rip into, she started in hard. She lured him in with honey and then turned it into boiling tar, hoping that if she was callous and mean enough she would drive him away, and sleep soundly at night knowing that she was right all along. Everybody always leaves, and she shouldn't feel bad about her behavior. Everyone ultimately deserves it, because everyone always follows the script she's written out for them in her head.
Nobody loves her, they're always after her money. Nobody cares about her, not really. if they can't handle the worst she can give them then they don't actually love her, and they never did.
I take a moment to mention that I fucking despise that fake Marilyn Monroe quote. 'You won't be my personal emotional punching bag? UGH YOU JUST CAN'T HANDLE HOW REAL I AM.
I liked this movie, I did. It's so easy to demonize violent criminals. Bernie Tiede, who did actually pick up a gun and murder a woman who had been emotionally abusing him, is a real person who experienced a full range of human emotions. He hurt when she insulted him. He felt trapped when she told him that he hated her like all the others. He felt responsible for the entirety of someone else's happiness when he didn't want to.
And then he fucking shot her.
This wasn't the same as spousal abuse cases. He had his own home that he slept in at night. He was financially independent. He had a vast network of support, and this woman was no threat to him. She was an eighty year old hermit with no social standing. The worst thing she could have done was be spiteful from a distance.
He killed a woman for being mean. An entire town revolted against justice because she was mean. They had to use a change of venue in an entirely unprecedented way in order to make this man pay for the crime he ABSOLUTELY committed, because an old woman was mean.
I feel like the movie was trying to make me feel the miscarriage of justice that obviously happened here, but I don't feel it.
She was a right old cunt. Seriously, even the hourly crime special I saw on the case took a lot of time to explain that. I get it.
That doesn't mean that Bernie Tiede had the right to murder her.
There are people like Margi in the world, people who hate themselves so much that they can't accept friendship or kindness from other people. They wear on you every second they're near you, like a sentient drizzle. Pissing all over everything and everyone just because they don't know how else to exist.
You don't have to spend your time with these people. Really, you don't. It doesn't matter how lonely they are, or how much history you have, or how sorry you feel for them.
Taking on the emotional well-being for another human being is a huge responsibility, and you don't have to do that for someone who sucks you dry. Sadness isn't an excuse for being terrible to the people around you.
People like Margi do 'get what's coming to them'. They die alone and unhappy, like they always knew they would. No action on your part is required.
