Available on DVD: “Bernie”

Bernie is a one-of-a-kind movie that establishes its own tone, walking a thin line between seriousness and absurdity. Set in eastern Texas, it allows director Richard Linklater to explore his own roots while telling a remarkable real-life story, something too crazy for anyone to make up.

The film is based on the story of Bernie Tiede, who made headlines about 15 years ago … and let’s say no more than that. In fact — I’m very serious about this — read nothing else about this movie. Every description out there, it seems, gives away the first half of the story. But you should have the opportunity to experience the movie the way I did, in complete ignorance, enjoying its every weird turn.

As played by Jack Black — this is the most penetrating and detailed work he has ever done — Bernie is a fascinating character, an assistant funeral director with a way of making everybody feel special. He sings at services, comforts widows, visits the lonely, buys people flowers and chocolate. He is about the nicest guy on earth, certainly the nicest and most popular guy in Carthage, Texas.

But he also has a quality, just a hint, of something else. This is where Black’s performance goes to the next level: There’s a suggestion of a darkness, or an unhappiness, a slightly covered quality. This is not to say he’s a phony — that would be too easy. He’s not a phony at all. He really is a lovely guy, but he’s not showing you everything.

Certainly, one thing he is not showing you, and yet you can guess, is that he is gay. He’s closeted and not sexually active, but he has a gay essence about him, which Black conveys, but gently. Perhaps his homosexuality is a source of pain, with his evangelical background, or perhaps it’s something else. In any case, there seems to be a wound in this guy. Again, Black doesn’t show it, but he lets you see it. This is a very rich character. You can see this movie and then talk about Black’s performance over drinks for the next hour.

Shirley MacLaine plays the richest, meanest woman in town, a lonely widow who takes a liking to Bernie, and she starts bringing him on vacations with her. MacLaine doesn’t do the things you might expect with the role. Her way of playing mean here is low-key, inward, disgusted and impatient. MacLaine knows there’s a human being in there, too, underneath it all — but maybe too far underneath.

The third strong performance in Bernie is that of Matthew McConaughey, as the town prosecutor. It’s a nice character turn for McConaughey, who plays the prosecutor as the smartest fish in a small pond, who thinks he’d be just as smart in a big pond, but we see otherwise.

Linklater, who co-wrote the script with Texas Monthly’s Skip Hollandsworth, tells the story in a documentary style, interspersing straight scenes with interview scenes, set in the present, in which townspeople look back on the events presented in the film. These interviews, which are lively, feel off the cuff, but they were scripted. They allow Linklater to show a cross-section of the town and to give the flavor of the local humor.

That humor is distinctly Southwestern throughout. As one of the locals, Kay McCabe — who is Matthew McConaughey’s mother (and you can see where his looks came from) — gets off one of the movie’s better lines, "Honey, there were people in this town who’d have shot her for $5!" And then, of course, there’s this minor classic: "Her nose was so high up she would drown in a rainstorm."

Taking into account the rich performances and the originality of tone, Bernie is one movie you should rent and view at your earliest opportunity.