Fargo (1996)

Written and directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

Starring William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Harve Presnell, and Frances McDormand

On an impulse last week, I watched Fargo again – the 1996 movie, not the TV series. It was as good as I remembered.

Since then, I’ve been trying to figure out why I felt it was so good. Was it the plot? The acting? The direction? The photography?

All of that was great, but it was held together by the characterization.

The protagonist, the person that solves the crime, is played by the always superb Frances McDormand. Her character, Marge Gunderson, is a hugely pregnant local cop called to investigate three roadside murders in the snow. She’s a very ordinary woman, whose only superhero ability is an average intelligence (which sets her apart from her male colleagues) and a sort of “Gee-honey” personality that makes you wonder how she ever became a police officer. At night, safe at home with her balding, chubby husband Norm, she prefers to talk about her husband’s excruciatingly mundane hobby of painting Mallards than her own dangerous and challenging job.

The antagonist, Jerry, is an ingenuous car salesman and family man that desperately hopes to solve his financial problems by having his wife kidnapped and ransomed. Unintentionally, he is the true the precipitator of all the mayhem that follows. He is played brilliantly by William H Macy.

The kidnappers – two intensely comical criminal morons played by Steve Buscemi and Peter Stomare – provide both the comedy and the grizzle that make this film so unique.

And last but not least, there are two things that make everything else deliciously surreal: the “Minnesota nice” accent” enunciated wonderfully by McDormand and Macy, and Fargo itself – a snow-covered, small-town wilderness that provides the perfectly ironic background for this gruesome and increasingly horrifying game of dominoes. (I had forgotten, but the movie was written and directed by the Coen brothers, who gave us the equally great, genre-defying comical caper Raising Arizona.)

Interesting Fact: Not surprisingly, Fargo won numerous prestigious awards and was named by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 best American films in history. What is surprising is that it cost only $9 million to make. That’s actually hard to believe. It grossed over $60 million at the box office and has probably generated another $40 million in residuals and rights. Not bad.

From Entertainment Weekly: “An illuminating amalgam of emotion and thought.”

From Rotten Tomatoes: “Violent, quirky, and darkly funny, Fargo delivers an original crime story and a wonderful performance by McDormand.”

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