Fargo (Special Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Fargo (Special Edition)
Movie Review: The Lessons of Fargo
Summary: 5 Stars
Some reviewers here call this the greatest film of the decade. Others express concerns and confusion about the movie's violence and nastiness - how can this be seen as funny?
Violence is not funny. People who have laughed at a foot sticking out of a wood chipper have done so either because of the sheer incongruity of the mise-en-scene, or because we're so surrounded by violence that any depiction causes an almost involuntary laugh response.
But in this movie it almost seems as though the Coen's want you to laugh at this, more or less as one might laugh at Moe hitting Curly with a hammer.
There's a reason for this thematic, and I think it might be easy to understand. Identification (or lack of it) is a source of great art. We can laugh at Moe hitting Curly because we know the hammer isn't real and that Moe does not really hate Curly or want to see him suffer.
This movie encourages the audience to distance itself from the pathetic, stupid people depicted in it, and thus laugh at what they do to one another. The criminals are dumb, and act dumb. The good guys are dumber. The main "good guy" talks about nice things in such pathetically cheerful dialect that you want something bad to happen to her, just so she'll shut up. Moe, would you poke her in the eye for me?
And then the Coens make us turn on a dime. I realized, on the first of many viewings of "Fargo," that the woman is not only a brilliant detective who "cracks" a pretty tough case, but she also has figured out life's most subtle challenge: how to be happy.
Her speech to the criminal at the end is seen by many as a simple continuation of the irritation of her affect. It is so much more. She tells all of us how to be happy. And, like Richard "Lord" Buckley (1906-1960) told us, it is so simple it evades all of us.
Love people - and love them unconditionally. Obey the rules, because most (though not all) of them were made for good reasons. Chasing money and sex does not produce happiness. Work hard and use the gifts you have. Give generously. Be cheerful and pleasant to others; it might even improve your own happiness.
None of this means having to be a chump. But we associate chumpness with this so much that we need to Coens to unscramble the egg just a bit. Throughout the movie, the dumb criminals invested their energies in acting smart; turns out the wisest person of all seemed the least wise.
Did I mention that the special features are outstanding? They are.
Movie Review: The Coen Brothers' Murder and Mayhem Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
Joel and Ethan Coen have put more than a little thought and originality into their movies, and "Fargo" comes together in a way that is more satisfying to me as a viewer than the rest, and I'm a BIG fan of "Raising Arizona" and "O Brother" and - well, I could go on, but let's just say I like the Coen Brothers' films.
"Fargo" is a comedy of errors with some decidedly dark sequences. It's a comedy of sorts, but a black one to be sure. There are some lighthearted moments, but some cold-blooded violence as well, and the folks I hear who don't like it were expecting some cheerful comedy. "Fargo" is not.
Bill Macy gives one of his best career performances as Jerry Lundegaard, who is a small-time car salesman with big dreams. His father-in-law is a big wheeler-dealer and Jerry thinks that if he had a little financing for one of his schemes that he could be a big success too. Unfortunately, Jerry thinks that the way to finance his scheme is to pay thugs to kidnap his wife and ransom his rich father-in-law.
To say that things go wrong would be an understatement. Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare play the kidnappers - one frightfully silent and the other obnoxiously talkative.
Sorting the whole mess out is Frances McDormand in her well-deserved Oscar-winning role as Sheriff Marge Gunderson. Marge is pregnant and full of North Dakota/Minnesota cheerfulness, but she is a serious and smart police woman. When they come upon one of the initial crime scenes her police partner gives his interpretation of the events that led to a couple of dead bodies and an abandoned car. "I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there, Lou." Marge then gives her version of the events, which the viewer knows is completely accurate.
Marge shares a folksy charm with most of the characters of the movie. Her husband, Norm, is a painter and one of the highlights of their little moments together comes when one of his paintings is accepted as a new stamp.
The dialogue is from the Land of Lake Wobegon and never fails to crack me up. When Marge finally arrives at Jerry's car dealership she announces "I'm investigatin' some malfeasance up Brainerd".
The thrill of watching this movie comes from seeing how all the elements of filmmaking - writing, acting, cinematography, sets, costumes and sound are all put together by the Coens in a way that is close to movie perfection. I watch it again every couple of years, and I like it as much every time.
Movie Review: Fargo
Summary: 5 Stars
Fargo (1996) MGM.
Academy Awards
Best Actress (Frances McDormand)
Best Original Screenplay (Joel and Ethan Coen)
Crew
Directed by: Joel Coen
Written by: Joel and Ethan Coen
Produced by: Ethan Coen
Cinematography by: Roger Deakens
Music by: Carter Burwell
Cast
Frances McDormand: Marge Gunderson
William H. Macy: Jerry Lundegaard
Steve Buscemi: Carl Showalter
Peter Stormare: Gaear Grimsrud
Harve Presnell: Wade Gustafson Kristin Rudrüd: Jean Lundegaard
John Carroll Lynch: Norm Gunderson
Plot
In Minnesota, people are the nicest around. But when you need money, you go to drastic measures. Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) is a man who is going in debt and is trying to save him and his family from going into bankruptcy. He then decides to hire two goons (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife (Kristen Rudrüd) so he can get the ransom money from his father-in-law, Wade Gustafson (Harve Presnell). The three men meet in a town called Fargo, North Dakota as the plan what money they're going to get. Jerry works at a car dealership so he gives them a Tan Sierra and $40,000. When they get pulled over for not having any license plates and there is a whimpering sleeping bag in the back seat, they have no choice but to kill the patrol officer and the innocent bystanders. Things begin to go wrong one by one and more people are killed. Officer Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) is tracking through the frozen tundra of Minnesota to put the pieces in place and solve the mystery. Excellent performances from everyone and their accents are perfect. Not just for Coen Brothers fans, this dark comedy is perfect and deserved the Oscar for best picture.
Trivia
At the beginning of the film, it says "Based on a True Story," but that statement is completely false. He Coen Brothers decided to lie and they told the New York Post-Dispatch a couple of weeks after the movie was released. They didn't say it fast enough to save a life. A woman from Tokyo, Japan searched throughout North Dakota for the money that Steve Buscemi buried in the snow and it cost her her life.
If You Liked This, You Would Like...
Blood Simple (1984)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
O' Brother Where Art Thou? (2001)
Miller's Crossing (1990)
Barton Fink (1991)
Movie Review: Who said crime was not fun?
Summary: 5 Stars
To kidnap someone and get a ransom is not an easy thing and it takes professionals to do it clean and neat. An amateur crime entrepreneur needs money for some economic venture. He wants it from his father in law who will naturally refuse to give it. So that dear amateur contacts two hooligans who accept to kidnap the amateur's wife, the very daughter of the rich father in law, to get the money as a ransom. Since the man is a car dealer, they want a brand new car and thereafter everything will go wrong. On the way back from the kidnapping with the abducted woman in the back the two hooligans are stopped because they had not registered the car that had a Dealer plate. They kill the state trooper. Two witnesses come by. They are chased and killed. Then the car that was given away has a problem with its registration at the bank or some accounting firm because its serial number is not legible on some listing of sold cars. The father in law decides to deliver the money and he ends up dead, plus a parking lot warden dies too. In the mean time one of the two kidnappers who was taking care of the woman kills her because she is whimpering, and he kills his accomplice when he arrives without the money he has buried in the snow along some cattle fencing, which causes his being killed and then put through a wood-chipper by the first kidnapper. At this moment the pregnant female sheriff from Brainerd who has been investigating the death of the state trooper in the Twin Cities arrives and arrest one kidnapper. During that time the entrepreneurial car dealer is trying to cool it off when the police comes for him. He will end up arrested too. The best Jewish thriller ever produced. When everything turns wrong. The Coen Brothers are perfect witnesses for these flunkies drop-out failing losers who are loose in their brains and disjointed in everything else. It is the Biblical Job but without any divine dimension, without the excuse of being victimized or tested by God. Just one mishap on top of another and the impossibility to stop the sinking process. And the Coen Brothers by just over-highlighting the negative events transform a pathetic character and a pathetic situation into a real funny one, not funny to the point of laughing your heads off, but funny to the point of thinking "God bless me and thanks I am not like these idiots." A classic of sorts of the Jewish humor we like.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID
Movie Review: Frances & The Coens at Their Oscar-Winning Finest!
Summary: 5 Stars
Even people I know who can't stand the Coen Brothers' style *love* this slyly low-key comedy-thriller. Unlike so many "offbeat" movies, the quirkiness of FARGO's Oscar-winning screenplay never cancels out its warmth or suspense as the Coens deftly balance clever plotting (*not* really based on a true story, as a poor disturbed Japanese woman found out when she came to the U.S. to dig up the hidden ransom money only to freeze to death trying), engaging characters, scares, poignancy, and the brothers' trademark loopy humor. Darkly hilarious as the kidnappers' bungling is, it renders the violence all the more chilling; one minute you're laughing, the next minute you're cringing over the shock of sympathetic characters meeting swift, bloody deaths. I found myself feeling terribly sorry for poor, sweet, unsuspecting Jean Lundegaard (Kristin Rudrud), her vulnerable adolescent son Scotty (Tony Denman), her wealthy father Wade (a delightfully bombastic Harve Presnell), and the other poor slobs unwittingly caught up in car salesman Jerry Lundegaard's plot to get money out of Wade by hiring two thugs to kidnap wife Jean and hold her for ransom, not factoring in the kidnappers' lack of both patience and anger management skills. Nobody plays losers like William H. Macy, and he sure deserved his Best Supporting Actor nomination for playing Jerry, who ought to have his picture in the dictionary next to the word "inept." Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare are letter-perfect as the loose-cannon wife-snatchers; if Buscemi isn't our generation's Peter Lorre, I don't know who is. But the heart and soul of FARGO is Frances McDormand, who truly earned her Best Actress Oscar here. Looking a bit like a young brunette Carol Burnett, McDormand is beyond superb as Marge Gunderson, the pregnant sheriff (my husband always liked the fact that FARGO doesn't include the nigh-obligatory scene of The Pregnant Heroine Suddenly Going Into Labor At The Worst Possible Time) who runs circles around the bad guys *and* her own well-meaning police force. Courteous and smart, down-to-earth yet slick, her luminous blue-green eyes never missing a thing, McDormand's Marge comes off as a warm Minnesota (is that an oxymoron? :-) female hybrid of Joe Friday and Lt. Columbo (I mean Columbo's stealth smarts, not his sloppiness :-). If you love FARGO, you owe it to yourself to own the deluxe DVD, chock full of way-cool extras too nifty and numerous to go into here -- oh, yah, you betcha! :-)