Coen Brothers month: Fargo

 A review by Brooks Rich

I'm not going to beat around the bush. Fargo is one of my favorite films of all time and my favorite film of the '90s. I think this is the Coen Brothers' untouchable masterpiece. Fargo is essentially a battle between good versus evil. A kind-hearted pregnant chief of police named Marge investigates a triple murder that leads her to a kidnapping plot that was almost doomed from the start. We see the kidnapping and murders play out and then watch as Marge closes in. There are no criminal masterminds in Fargo. The so-called ringleader of the plot is a hapless schmuck who can't do anything right. The men he hires to kidnap his wife are so insane it's a wonder they even get the kidnapping done. 

Even though the film is called Fargo it mostly takes place in Minnesota, in the cities Brainerd and Minneapolis. The setting is almost a character itself. The snowy bleak landscape and that overtly exaggerated niceness of the characters, which oppresses their darkest tendencies until it explodes into violence. Minor characters like the cashier and parking lot attendant represent that over niceness I mentioned, which often grates on the main characters as they deal with all the bullshit. 

Fargo has my favorite protagonist from any Coen Brothers' film, Marge Gunderson, the loveable and very pregnant police chief of Brainerd. Marge is as good as they come, a cop who believes in justice and doing what's right. It's up to her to make everything right, restore the order that has been upset by the antagonists. Frances McDormand gives the best performance of her career here. She brings warmth and seriousness to the role of Marge. Her accent might be funny and the constant use of yeah delightful, but she's still a cop and she still puts everything together. She and her husband Norm are also the beating heart of the film. Their relationship is the purest thing in the film. It's what Marge is fighting for, a simple life with someone you care about. In the Coen's filmography, Marge is the character that represents pure goodness. 

The other acting heavyweight of Fargo is William H. Macy as Jerry, our so-called mastermind. The fact that Macy didn't win an Academy Award for this performance is one of cinema's greatest sins. Macy plays Jerry as both despicable and sympathetic. He finds the humanity in a character that should have none. Sure he has his wife kidnapped but his father in law does treat him like shit. Jerry is a real-life villain. He does something bad but we understand why. Jerry is also the rare Coen villain who is brought to justice in a legal system. There are two of them in this film, Jerry and one of the hired thugs, Grimsrud, played by Peter Stormare. 

Fargo's iconic moment is Steve Buscemi in the wood chipper and it perfectly sums up the film. A moment of violence that has little to no reason for being. The culmination of a convoluted scheme that had no business working and ultimately fails spectacularly, with nothing to show for it but a pile of dead bodies.  A lot of the Coen's films are about this, simple crimes or schemes that completely fail.