Review #732: 'Fargo' (1996)

The Coen Brothers' screw with the audience from the get-go with their 1996 Best Picture nominee Fargo, widely considered their finest work amongst a filmography that can be compared to that of any of the greats. Claiming this to be based on a true story when it is in fact anything but, the Coen's cement Fargo's twisted and now highly recognisable quirkiness from the first second, only for us to transported into this strange and oddball world of funny accents, eternal snowfall, wood-chippers and kinda-funny-lookin' criminals. In fact, the movie is not even set in Fargo at all. We glimpse it briefly before moving onto Brainerd, Minnesota, where the tremors of a dangerous arrangement are played out with violence and greed.

Car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), in a desperate attempt to make some quick cash to fund a real estate deal, hires two hitmen - Carl (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear (Peter Stormare) - to kidnap his wife and split the ransom money paid by her wealthy father Wade (Harve Presnell). With the deal arranged, Jerry makes a final plea to Wade for investment, only for Wade to accept. Jerry tries to call the kidnapping off, but it is too late, and soon enough Carl and Gaear are leaving a trail of murders behind them. With a triple shooting at Brainerd that leaves a state trooper dead, pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) is called in to investigate the crime spree.

What the Coen's, cinematographer Roger Deakins and music scorer Carter Burwell created with Fargo is a film like no other, where a giant statue of a lumberjack carrying an axe looms over the film like some unconventional deity, and the characters are equally as mocked as they are warmly captured. With their small-town ways and strange, chirpy Swedish-American accents, not many of the characters in Fargo seem to notice the darkness that has crept into their town, and seem content with planning fishing trips, shuffling along the buffet table, or discussing the weather. The accent works like a character itself, a portal into these character's lives. You've most likely quoted "you betcha!" or "oh, geez," in homage at some point if you've seen this movie before.

Fargo also treads dangerously along the black comedy line, somehow making a man being blended through a wood-chipper hilarious and throwing us off course entirely with Marge's bizarre and uncomfortable catch-up drink with lonely friend-from-school Mike (Steve Park). But the Coen's have always done that, and probably never more successful than with this. The cruelty that the Coen's inflict on the rather loathsome characters seems somehow just, and offer a truly loveable character in Marge, one of the Coen's greatest creations, and wonderfully performed by the Oscar-winning McDormand. This is a masterpiece, a defining moment for Joel and Ethan Coen, who have created a haunting, strange, dark and very funny noir, and possibly the greatest film of the 1990's.


Directed by: Joel Coen
Starring: Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Harve Presnell, Peter Stormare
Country: USA/UK

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie