Saturday, July 12, 2014


Movie Review

Fargo (1996)

March 8, 1996

FILM REVIEW;Deadly Plot by a Milquetoast Villain

Published: March 8, 1996

JOEL and Ethan Coen's new film is called "Fargo" even though most of it is set in Minnesota. Apparently the title is about something beyond geography. Testing limits, breaking boundaries, going too far: the Coen brothers' eclectic films, ranging from the great ("Barton Fink") to the inscrutable ("The Hudsucker Proxy"), always manage to make that their guiding principle and secret weapon. They're road movies headed for the tricky unknown, and "Fargo" finds the Coens roaming exuberantly across their favorite terrain.

The Coens are at their clever best with this snowbound film noir, a crazily mundane crime story set in their native Midwest. Purportedly based on real events, it brings them as close as they may ever come -- not very -- to everyday life and ordinary people. Perversely, the frozen north even brings out some uncharacteristic warmth in these coolly cerebral film makers, although anyone seeking the milk of human kindness would be well advised to look elsewhere. The Coens' outlook remains as jaundiced as it was in "Blood Simple," the razor-sharp 1984 debut feature that the much more stylish and entertaining "Fargo" brings to mind.

Fargo" starts small and almost innocently -- by the Coens' standards, anyhow. Only an opening title stating that this story has been told factually "out of respect for the dead" hints at the escalating mayhem that lies ahead. All we see at first is a beleaguered car salesman named Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) hiring two hoods (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife. He's in debt and needs ransom money from his father-in-law (Harve Presnell), who otherwise wouldn't give him the time of day.

These details are almost secondary to the film's more general interests: merrily evoking the singsong drabness of Midwestern life, and suggesting that this year's dominant film motif could well be Revenge of the Nerds. ("The Young Poisoner's Handbook" and the imminent "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and "I Shot Andy Warhol" all make fine, mordant use of a nerd's-eye point of view.) Certainly Jerry makes a milquetoast of a villain, what with the golf toys and matching pencils adorning his office or the galoshes and grocery bags that accompany him to a crime scene. Wide-eyed and mousy, played by Mr. Macy with fine panic-stricken timidity, he is left to handle the wild consequences of the kidnapping plot when it spins out of control.

The Coens (Joel directs; Ethan produces; both wrote this screenplay) fill "Fargo" with close encounters between the nerdy and the macabre. For instance, Jerry's wife (Kristin Rudrud) is knitting in pink pajamas and watching perky morning television when her black-hooded kidnappers appear at the door. (She tries to fight them off by hurling a pastel-colored Princess phone.)

Even when events turn deadly, the Coens keep their emphasis on piquant weirdo details and let their mood remain impossibly light. "Fargo" is a crime tale in which somebody's foot is seen sticking out of a wood chipper. And the Coens can present that image so that its salient feature is the victim's white sock.

"Fargo" has as its centerpiece the gloriously unhip Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), exactly the rural chief of police whom Jerry Lundegaard deserves. Sometimes the camera gazes balefully at a huge statue of Paul Bunyan, but it's Marge who is this film's idea of a folk hero. Seriously pregnant, wearing a ruffled blouse or a hat with ear flaps, toddling intrepidly through the snow to investigate grisly crime scenes, Marge is this film's ace detective as well as its closest thing to a moral center. The film adores her, but it also has great fun with her lingo ("Oh, ya betcha, yah!") and with her ability to eat a hearty meal while in the presence of live bait.

Marge keeps up her domestic bliss with Norm "Son-of-a-Gunderson" (John Carroll Lynch), who paints ducks that he hopes are destined for stamps, while she also patiently pursues Jerry. And "Fargo" watches in morbid fascination as the net tightens around the film's foremost sap. Meanwhile, Mr. Buscemi's character becomes increasingly fed up with his fellow kidnapper, a stony blond who is a man of few words. (Consistent with the oddball tone, one of those words is "unguent.") When witnesses begin telling Marge about "a little guy, kind of funny looking?" the net tightens around Mr. Buscemi's character, too.

As "Fargo" plays out the kidnapping and its aftermath, it sometimes turns grisly with the sharp ferocity that is another staple of the Coens' noir style. The violence is so quick it appears cartoonish, but there's no mistaking the fact that this tale is fundamentally grim. Yet the film makers' absurdist humor and beautifully honed storytelling give it a winning acerbity, a quirky appreciation of the sheer futility captured on screen. "There's more to life than a little money, you know," Marge tells a malefactor. "Don't you know that?" The characters in "Fargo" mostly wouldn't have a clue about what Marge means.

Even for film makers this idiosyncratic, the casting of "Fargo" is offbeat. But it works in creating a humorously drab universe where the minor characters contentedly do things like sweep slush or admire the local Radisson. Beyond Mr. Macy and Ms. McDormand, who are perfectly matched (their battles of wits are among the film's best scenes), "Fargo" makes good use of Mr. Buscemi in his cork-blowing mode, the physically daunting Mr. Stormare (from "Fanny and Alexander"), Steve Park as a very strange old friend of Marge's, and Mr. Presnell. Best known for "Paint Your Wagon" and absent from the screen for 25 years, Mr. Presnell has just the gruff, booming manner to explain why Mr. Macy, as his son-in-law, looks scared to death.

"Fargo" has been hauntingly photographed by Roger Deakins with great, expressive use of white-outs that sometimes make the characters appear to be moving through a dream. Roads disappear, swallowed up in a snowy void, making "Fargo" look eerily remote. As the title suggests, there is a steady sense of distance and uncharted territory. For all its exaggerated ordinariness, this film seems to start out where others leave off.

"Fargo" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes brief nudity and sexual situations, as well as quick but gory violence.


Directed by Joel Coen; written by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen; director of photography, Roger Deakins; edited by Roderick Jaynes; music by Carter Burwell; production designer, Rick Heinrichs; produced by Eric Fellner, Tim Bevan, Ethan Coen and John Cameron; released by Gramercy Pictures. Running time: 95 minutes. This film is rated R.

WITH: Frances McDormand (Marge Gunderson), Steve Buscemi (Carl Showalter), Peter Stormare (Gaear Grimsrud), William H. Macy (Jerry Lundegaard), Harve Presnell (Wade Gustafson), Kristen Rudrud (Jean Lundegaard), John Carroll Lynch (Norm Gunderson) and Steve Park (Mike Yanagita).

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