Brock Landers
12-12-2000, 03:48 PM
"Fargo" A Brock Landers Overview of A Coen Brothers Film (10/10)
After a recent viewing I realized that "Fargo" is nothing short of a supernatural occurrence. An uncompromisingly honest, bloodstained film set so far from the colorful lights of the modern day metropolis that it feels as if it takes place on a different world, yet it is completely conceivable and absolutely compelling from beginning to end. "Fargo" is just honest, great American filmmaking…
The film starts off with…Minnesota? I mean…Kansas has its white-trash serial killers/vagrants…New York has the mob (and a yuppie named Bateman)…Wisconsin has its Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer-types…Mississippi has its rednecks high on moonshine, toting shotguns and ropes…Florida has its gaudy coke dealers, Tec-9's and slick high performance cars (not to mention Ted Bundy)…but Minnesota? Paul Bunyan? Mary Tyler Moore?
Funny thing is, after watching "Fargo" it all makes sense. It's set on the snowblind Minnesota plains. It comes from Joel & Ethan Coen, who commemorated the desperate small/beer crimes of Texas in "Blood Simple", and with 'Fargo", they have masterfully uncovered what makes film noir great. A relentlessly ferocious story of more people driven blood simple by desire, anger and idiocy. The simple-mindedness is pure Coen brothers magic. (think…"Raising Arizona", "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" & "The Big Lebowski") The brothers…Joel directs, Ethan produces, they both write… aren't fascinated with beautiful or courageous people, but to dumb-as-a-sack-of-wet-hammers ones. Their quintessential character doesn't really get it, can't see the big picture, operates off motives that are base and tawdry. (think…Hi McDonnough in "Rasing Arizona" or Clooney in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" It's the same with "Fargo", about a small-time loser who sets a plan in motion on the simplistic speculation that all things will go as intended. Of course… they don't because they can't, and a seemingly simple strategy bursts into senseless violence that leaves seven people deceased and the snow slushy with fresh blood…the brilliant part being that it's all a comedy…
Our protagonist is classical…an intelligent cop who figures it all out, goes after the evil-doers and takes them down, one at a time, like an avenging angel…but with the Coens maybe there is no such thing as simple or normal…she's also in a family way (7 months). Marge Gunderson (played by Frances McDormand) is the chief of police in Brainerd, Minnessota, a tiny town 90 miles or so across the glacial tundra from Minneapolis-St. Paul. She's so spirited and nonchalant (think wood chipper-style), making most folks look like they have a depressive disorder / personality. Nothing stops her, and when she investigates two bodies becoming rigid in the snow, the blood on them coagulated into coal black jello, she turns to her deputy and asks him to remind her to pick up some nightcrawlers for her husband, a wildlife artist. In fact, the Coens get at something very seldomly accomplished in films, where the cops almost never have personal lives because they are so preoccupied and drained by the violence in their lives. Not Marge…no dang way, maam. She's from the midwest, Minnesota-style…She does her job, then puts it away and goes home for takeout fast food from Arby's and a quiet evening of watching Carson on the tube (it's 1987…Johnny's still on TV). She may not have a distressing sense of existence, but she has the certainty that rules are to be complied with and the commitment to her profession to see that they are…
For a second, it would seem that the cultured Coen brothers are goofing on the poor peasants of the plain, but then you see the magic. Those cheerful accents, driven by Scandinavian heritage, bounce crazily into the cold air…untouched by misfortune, magnitude or obscenity…"darn it" or "you're darn tootin" or "what the heck is going on?" or "cheese, but it's darn cold today, yah?". You see, the secret of "Fargo" does not lie in arrogance or snobbishness…it is all about humanity and good will…
There's Jerry Lundegaard (an ingenious William H. Macy), a peculiarly immature man who has never quite made it on his own, though he's pleasantly married to surly millionaire Wade Gustafson's daughter, Jean. Jerry, in his foolhardy search for success to prove himself in Wade's unrelenting eyes, has gotten himself deeply in debt. Thus the original idea is his…to enlist two men to abduct Jean, go to Wade (Harve Presnell) for the huge ransom, give the kidnappers a small portion (unlike Marge's favorite smorgasbord) of it and keep the rest for himself to pay off his debts. But in Minnesota nothing is simple…he hires big-talking small-timer Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and the dubiously stoic psychopath Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare), whose answer to everything is to start hitting or start blasting. With those two aboard, the plan is ill-fated (just check out the crazy indian beating the crap out of buscemi with his belt) from the start…it stumbles wildly toward chaos in the first few seconds, intensifies into a shootout on the two-lane highway that leaves three frozen stiffs in the snow, and then begins to fall apart as the thugs fall out among themselves, Jerry falls out with Wade and slowly, surely, Marge closes in…
All in all: a fascinating film that is full of unique and highly textured characters…an instant classic…(10/10)
After a recent viewing I realized that "Fargo" is nothing short of a supernatural occurrence. An uncompromisingly honest, bloodstained film set so far from the colorful lights of the modern day metropolis that it feels as if it takes place on a different world, yet it is completely conceivable and absolutely compelling from beginning to end. "Fargo" is just honest, great American filmmaking…
The film starts off with…Minnesota? I mean…Kansas has its white-trash serial killers/vagrants…New York has the mob (and a yuppie named Bateman)…Wisconsin has its Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer-types…Mississippi has its rednecks high on moonshine, toting shotguns and ropes…Florida has its gaudy coke dealers, Tec-9's and slick high performance cars (not to mention Ted Bundy)…but Minnesota? Paul Bunyan? Mary Tyler Moore?
Funny thing is, after watching "Fargo" it all makes sense. It's set on the snowblind Minnesota plains. It comes from Joel & Ethan Coen, who commemorated the desperate small/beer crimes of Texas in "Blood Simple", and with 'Fargo", they have masterfully uncovered what makes film noir great. A relentlessly ferocious story of more people driven blood simple by desire, anger and idiocy. The simple-mindedness is pure Coen brothers magic. (think…"Raising Arizona", "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" & "The Big Lebowski") The brothers…Joel directs, Ethan produces, they both write… aren't fascinated with beautiful or courageous people, but to dumb-as-a-sack-of-wet-hammers ones. Their quintessential character doesn't really get it, can't see the big picture, operates off motives that are base and tawdry. (think…Hi McDonnough in "Rasing Arizona" or Clooney in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" It's the same with "Fargo", about a small-time loser who sets a plan in motion on the simplistic speculation that all things will go as intended. Of course… they don't because they can't, and a seemingly simple strategy bursts into senseless violence that leaves seven people deceased and the snow slushy with fresh blood…the brilliant part being that it's all a comedy…
Our protagonist is classical…an intelligent cop who figures it all out, goes after the evil-doers and takes them down, one at a time, like an avenging angel…but with the Coens maybe there is no such thing as simple or normal…she's also in a family way (7 months). Marge Gunderson (played by Frances McDormand) is the chief of police in Brainerd, Minnessota, a tiny town 90 miles or so across the glacial tundra from Minneapolis-St. Paul. She's so spirited and nonchalant (think wood chipper-style), making most folks look like they have a depressive disorder / personality. Nothing stops her, and when she investigates two bodies becoming rigid in the snow, the blood on them coagulated into coal black jello, she turns to her deputy and asks him to remind her to pick up some nightcrawlers for her husband, a wildlife artist. In fact, the Coens get at something very seldomly accomplished in films, where the cops almost never have personal lives because they are so preoccupied and drained by the violence in their lives. Not Marge…no dang way, maam. She's from the midwest, Minnesota-style…She does her job, then puts it away and goes home for takeout fast food from Arby's and a quiet evening of watching Carson on the tube (it's 1987…Johnny's still on TV). She may not have a distressing sense of existence, but she has the certainty that rules are to be complied with and the commitment to her profession to see that they are…
For a second, it would seem that the cultured Coen brothers are goofing on the poor peasants of the plain, but then you see the magic. Those cheerful accents, driven by Scandinavian heritage, bounce crazily into the cold air…untouched by misfortune, magnitude or obscenity…"darn it" or "you're darn tootin" or "what the heck is going on?" or "cheese, but it's darn cold today, yah?". You see, the secret of "Fargo" does not lie in arrogance or snobbishness…it is all about humanity and good will…
There's Jerry Lundegaard (an ingenious William H. Macy), a peculiarly immature man who has never quite made it on his own, though he's pleasantly married to surly millionaire Wade Gustafson's daughter, Jean. Jerry, in his foolhardy search for success to prove himself in Wade's unrelenting eyes, has gotten himself deeply in debt. Thus the original idea is his…to enlist two men to abduct Jean, go to Wade (Harve Presnell) for the huge ransom, give the kidnappers a small portion (unlike Marge's favorite smorgasbord) of it and keep the rest for himself to pay off his debts. But in Minnesota nothing is simple…he hires big-talking small-timer Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and the dubiously stoic psychopath Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare), whose answer to everything is to start hitting or start blasting. With those two aboard, the plan is ill-fated (just check out the crazy indian beating the crap out of buscemi with his belt) from the start…it stumbles wildly toward chaos in the first few seconds, intensifies into a shootout on the two-lane highway that leaves three frozen stiffs in the snow, and then begins to fall apart as the thugs fall out among themselves, Jerry falls out with Wade and slowly, surely, Marge closes in…
All in all: a fascinating film that is full of unique and highly textured characters…an instant classic…(10/10)