MUBI

Boy, is this a good movie. In its bare bones it is a crime drama but the Coen brothers constantly undercut the seriousness with a quirky irony. The acting, the script, and the direction lift the movie light years above most of the movies of its decade.
The performances, for instance, everyone speaks with what passes for an upper Midwestern accent, a very pronounced accent, let’s say. So when characters are doing wicked things on screen, it’s rather like watching people dressed in clown suits do nasty things. It’s utterly impossible to take it very seriously — only just seriously enough for us to feel sorry for the victims and to disapprove of the bad guys, but no more than that.
Everyone except the two killers are forced by their culture to speak and act cheerfully. They never swear either. “You’re darn tootin’,” they say. The casting couldn’t be better, with Frances McDormand, Steve Buscemi, and Bill Macy outstanding.
The script is likewise splendidly done. It’s full of scenes that seem peripheral except that they add to our understanding of the characters and often lead to later payoffs. Without taking the space to describe them, I will simply mention the scene in the restaurant between MacDormand and her Japanese friend from high school. Why is it in there at all? (My God, those hotel restaurants are depressingly ugly.) Well — among other things, such as establishing the kind of milieu these folks consider Ritzy, it tells us quite a bit about how MacDormand handles attempts to violate her inherent good nature. When the Japanese guy tries to sit next to her she tells him firmly that she’d prefer it if he sat across the table so that she can see him more easily. When he breaks down in tears she whispers that it’s all okay. She is polite, a little distant without being unfriendly, completely practical, and absolutely iron bound in her values. Nobody is going to take advantage of or discompose this hyper pregnant babe. Further, this scene is a set up for a later one. After MacDormand learns that the Japanese guy has told her a gaggle of lies, she wakes up to the fact that, yes, people can tell untruths — and she returns to interview Macy a second time.
In another scene, when she’s pressing one of the criminals during an interview, he excuses himself for a moment and she spots him taking off in his car. She exclaims, “Oh, for Pete’s sake, he’s FLEEIN’ THE INTERVIEW.” It’s impossible to improve on a line like that, or on MacDormand’s delivery of it.
The third element of the film that makes it superior is the direction. The pauses come at the right times. A woman is sitting on her couch watching a soap opera on TV. Through the glass door of her apartment she sees a man approach. He’s wearing a black ski mask and carrying a crowbar. He walks up to her door and shades his eyes while trying to peer inside. Now in an ordinary action movie, by this time the woman would be screeching and speeding down the hallway. Not here. The victim sits there staring at the intruder as he fiddles at the door, half horrified and half curious. “Who is this guy? He’s not the meter reader, is he?” Coen the director has an eye for the suggestive picturesque too. Bill Macy has asked his father-in-law for a large loan for some sure-fire business proposition, but Dad offers him only a finder’s fee. We see Macy’s deflated face as his disappointment sets in. Cut. Now we’re looking at a white screen punctuated by four or five bare trees equidistant from one another, and there is a tiny car in the middle of the whiteness. Then Macy’s tiny figure trudges into the bottom of the shot and we realize we’re looking at a snow-filled parking lot with only one ordinary-sized car in the center of it.
Wintery weather plays an important part in the movie. People die in it, drive off the road because of it, stand shivering in it. Two freezing people are conversing on the street while one shovels snow. The shoveler stops, gazes up at the sky, and remarks that it “ought to be really cold tomorrow.” Cars and ambulances tend to drive in and out of white outs during blizzards and blowing snow. MacDormand is driving her murdering prisoner through a blank white landscape in which nothing much is visible and she is mildly remonstrating with him, saying something like, “Why did you do it, for a little bit of money? It’s a perfect day, and here you are.” (A perfect day!) There are seven murders in this movie. Only three take place on screen. The others either take place off screen or else the director has the good sense to cut at the moment the gun fires or the ax blade lands.
“Fargo” is one of perhaps half a dozen movies from the 1990s that I would consider buying on DVD. It’s an original and refreshingly adult picture. Don’t miss it!!

Totally overrated, but I guess it’s not bad at what it’s trying to do. I really don’t get why anyone would wanna watch this again though, the atmosphere is too bleak and gruesome, but at least I squeezed the lemon out of it, you know? Like imagine I took half a lemon and sucked on it, then tossed the remaining. Let me explain for you: the thriller parts had me chilled! A kidnapping with a cooking commercial playing in the background? Dang… The way he walks up the stairs has got to be the perfect stimulus to accelerate the mind into total panicking. But what really gave me a feel for this movie was the chase/murder scene purported by that guy “without hesitation.” When he got out of his car… dang. Then the comedy started flowing and at this point my mouth is overcome with sourness. I don’t know which scene is funnier: the interview with the prostitutes (yeah?) or the meeting with an old high school acquaintance… actually the later is funnier.

I’m not too much into the Coen’s style at this point.

I can’t really say anything bad about this because there is nothing wrong with it. The visuals and content are flawless and the characters performed to perfection. However, the main thing this movie does is make you not want to meet anyone from Minnesota, those accents are deadly. That being said, all the performances are all really well done; Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare are incredible together. On top of that there is a really interesting story going on, it’s a very different type of crime film. The multiple perspectives and change in typical location makes this a very unique type of film. It’s not my favorite Coen Brother’s movie, but it’s certainly well done and perfect for what it is.

Sickening and delightful, Fargo is a slice-of-life hyberolized in a way that only The Coens can offer. The story, while seemingly light on moral and theme, is very heavy on the mind. The stupidity of the unconventional villains (Buscemi, Stormare, and Macy) are wonderfully matched with the naivety of the heroine (Frances McDormand). But as naive as she is, her firm ideals and genuine goodness make her loveable. Fargo is simultaneously hysterical and disturbing, a combination that the Coens have pinned and use incrimentally in their work.

(Originally written March 13, 2005)

Fargo dances a strange line between film noir and comedy and takes many risks. Like most other film noirs, it does not make explicit statements about the morality of the characters and the situations. The film simply presents the story, and the audience decides on its own what to make of the story. The peculiarity of the events and the characters give this film an interesting tone and unique atmosphere. The characters are all memorable, particularly Steve Buscemi as Carl, one of the two kidnappers in this movie. The contrast between him as and Peter Stormare as Gaear makes for a strange chemistry that results in some of the best lines of the film.

“‘No.’ That’s the first thing you’ve said in the last four hours. That’s, a fountain of conversation there, buddy. That’s a geyser.”

William H. Macy gives a great performance as a man who makes stupid decisions because of his guilty conscience. He is caught in a cycle of self-perpetuating rash actions. He is absolutely paranoid in the conversation between him and police officer Marge, played by Frances McDormand in an Oscar-winning role. Macy hilariously reacts even though McDormand is kind and decent, simply doing her job. Marge is an interesting character because she, pregnant and close to her loving husband, is able to effectively do the dangerous parts of her job as an enforcer of the law, willing to put herself in danger. Everything in this film fits together perfectly: the art direction, acting, script and score. What could have been an over-the-top thriller in lesser hands is a subtle cinematic masterpiece in the hands of the Coen brothers.