director
Joel Coen
screenwriters
Ethan Coen
Joel Coen
producer
Ethan Coen
cinematographer
Roger Deakins
music
Carter Burwell
editor
"Roderick Jaynes"
(the Coens)
cast
Frances McDormand (Marge Gunderson)
William H. Macy (Jerry Lundegaard)
Steve Buscemi (Carl Showalter)
Peter Stormare (Gaear Grimsrud)
Kristin Rudrüd (Jean Lundegaard)
Harve Presnell (Wade Gustafson)
Tony Denman (Scotty Lundegaard)
Gary Houston (Irate Customer)
Steven Reevis (Shep Proudfoot)
John Carroll Lynch (Norm Gunderson)
Steve Park (Mike Yanagita)
Bruce Campbell (Soap Opera Actor)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 98m
u.s.
release: March 8, 1996
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other coen
bros. films
reviewed on this website:
- barton
fink
- the
big lebowski
- blood
simple
- the
hudsucker proxy
- intolerable
cruelty
- the
ladykillers
- the
man who wasn't there
- miller's
crossing
- o
brother, where art thou?
- raising
arizona
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It doesn't take long before
you realize that Fargo, the mesmerizing new film by Joel
and Ethan Coen, is about blankness of all kinds -- moral, ethical,
emotional. Yet the movie itself is far from blank. In the past,
the Coens have been accused of playing art-house film-nerd jokes
on the audience. Fargo has its cruel jokes, too, but underneath
them is a genuine respect for decency, a sympathy for human frailty.
The blankness begins in the opening shot -- a car slowly appearing
in a completely white frame (white sky, snowy ground) as it heads
towards us. This vast whiteness, this void, is a canvas that
every character gets to paint on, usually in blood. The opening
shot is a chilling image of possibility, a blank page whose emerging
text can spell redemption or doom.
Fargo has a rather simple plot. A weaselly car salesman
named Jerry (William H. Macy) hatches a plan to pry money out
of his rich father-in-law: He hires two thugs to kidnap his wife,
hoping to pocket half the ransom money he expects her dad to
put up. Jerry, unfortunately, is an idiot, and the pair of thugs
(hot-headed Steve Buscemi and cold-blooded Peter Stormare) aren't
Rhodes scholars either. The thugs, it seems, can't drive three
feet without having to resort to violence. Soon, several corpses
are left to harden in the snow.
The Coens have visited this territory before, most notably in
Blood Simple. What's fresh about Fargo is its heroine,
Chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), who carries a gun,
a badge, and a very pregnant belly (she's seven months along)
that precedes her on the trail of the killers. McDormand, who
has always been a great unsung character actress, has her best
role yet as the dedicated Marge. The Coens don't encourage you
to laugh at her Minnesota accent ("Yaaah") or the way
she waddles around a crime scene (the unborn life inside her
contrasts with the stark evidence of murder). The brothers know
they've got the best movie heroine in years. Marge is polite,
cheerful, whip-smart, and perpetually hungry. She does her part
to melt this sharp icicle of a movie.
As usual, the Coens (Joel directs, Ethan produces, they both
write the scripts) flood the climax with lurid gore and pain.
A wood-chipper is put to bad use, and poor Steve Buscemi takes
enough abuse for five movies. That this all happens against immaculate
wintry backdrops makes the violence more horrific and more tragic.
The blood freezes before it hits the ground. Your blood might
freeze, too.
Like Hitchcock and David Lynch,
the Coens create a surface of bland normality that gradually
devolves into horror and perversity, until finally the perversity
runs wild. But Fargo, with its easygoing earth-mother
heroine, may be the Coens' most accessible film yet, and definitely
their richest and most mature. In other movies, the Coens got
off on coolness bordering on coldness. This time, they show us
that warmth can endure in a cold world without losing its vitality.
Kind-hearted Marge points the way: The boys may chill our bones,
but the woman thaws us out.
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