Director: Richard Linklater
Screenplay by: Richard Linklater & Skip Hollandsworth
Rating:
(4/5 Stars)
In my first job after undergrad school, I was a newspaper reporter in a small Southern town. My supervisor, the city editor, once shared his life dream with me. It didn't involve winning a Pulitzer -- he wanted to be a funeral director. This struck me as an odd choice, until he described how he envisioned his role: preparing the details, greeting and comforting mourners, shepherding families through what is inevitably a tremendous life crisis.
That's when I understood that in a small town -- particularly in my native South -- a funeral director is, in some ways, the heart of a community. With the perfect balance of gravitas and reassuring calm, he must guide each family through one of the most painful life transitions they will ever make. Twenty-five years later, with much more experience of death and grief, I understand that more than ever.
This defines the role Bernie (Jack Black) holds in his community. He is an assistant funeral director in Carthage, Texas, seemingly open-hearted and generous, skilled at comforting the bereaved, and beloved by his neighbors, especially the elderly widows whom he often finds in his care. His is also a pillar of his church. One of those gentle, unassuming people around whom a community revolves in time of need.
