Fargo (DVD 2003)

The irony of the title 'Fargo' is bleakly overdone, as the film stays in Brainerd (nerd brain) County and that's as far as one needs go, unless oil is discovered there and then it would be 'Wells Fargo'! But it's all a send-up and the credit justifying anonymity for actual survivors is a joke - WHAT survivors? Snowbound parochial life is depicted as stifling conformity turned into a cliché of itself set against the inadequate remedies of a losing car-salesman gaining two bungling abductors (of his wifey) so to split the paying father's ransom. The film's theme of social conformity v psychopathic nonconformity highlights the emptiness of both and is an entertaining criticism of society's norms! Proudfoot, the guarded Indian mechanic who recommended the clumsiest abductor imaginable, hardly aids the plot by his terseness in the pivotal unfolding of this straitlaced disaster movie! Frank Spencer, directing, couldn't have done worse but would have blown the Coens' deadpan touch!
The father-in-law's character (typified hating to see his hockey team losing on TV) and that of his slimy accomplice, in the terminal denseness of society's materialistic ambitions, drove him too blindly - since he got shot for demanding to see his daughter before handing over the ransom! This trivialised his character, otherwise sharper than his son-in-law's, as a textual weakness from an imbalance between financial shrewdness and a lack of care for his own safety! That might have been remedied by Jerry plausibly pleading the father could jeopardise his own safety! But the authors wanted to remake a point about stupidity! One need be smart to do that and, although I couldn't decode the mother's complaints over grades with son Scotty (why should one, with two Coen geniuses in charge?) and his textually hidden reason to swear, I liked the film's dark humour, sharply highlighted in barren snow, but got the impression this sat north of the border in Canada than Minnesota.
Bravo for the dramatic shot of the obsessive psychopath (a man of few words!) wielding an axe from behind at his partner. Fargo could have been spliced better with the woman's feet in white socks being reduced in the shredder and Margie, with gun, challenging "That isn't the end of her, you know!") but the authors preferred the gawky partner minced. The comfortable darkened interiors of roadside restaurants seemed to be in complete harmony with the affable character of the father-in-law's henchman. I found the ex-boyfriend episode tediously stretched! The local patois sounded of Norwegian origin, to reinforce the theme of native simplicity, but it never seemed overdone, even by Margie's programmed deputy! The music aptly reflects a detached strangeness including sparse Elizabethan grounds for viols, although there's plenty of grounds for all sorts of viles! The episode of the kidnapped woman hectically running around hooded, trussed like a headless chicken, in the snow in bare feet pointlessly trying to escape was a statement of utmost irony re reactive behaviour devoid of sense, a level on which most of the locals seemed to operate as a comforting milieu.
I know this film makes a brilliantly terse statement of dark humour but, in reviewing it, I take its closing point as implicit, could go deeper, that those outside America would know more about John than (later) Paul Bunyan, so the statue's menacing portent of repressed psychopathic violence stays enigmatic. Obviously talented directors!

KEEP WATCHING IT ON TV AND BEING INTRIGUED AND THEN NEVER BEING ABLE TO WATCH THE ENDING, GREAT FILM. WILLIAM MACY GREAT ACTOR AND MARGE THE PREGGERS POLICE WOMAN IS HYSTERICAL IN A SICK SENSE. FACTUAL TRUE STORY WITH A VERY BLACK COMEDY TWIST BUT EXCELLENT. KEEPS YOU GLUED.

With this film, a thriller of kidnap and betrayal shot through with the blackest of comedy, the Coen brothers finally achieved greatness. The direction, acting, screenplay and cinematography are all quite superb and as with all great films the time passes in the blink of an eye. Frances McDormand thoroughly deserved her best actress oscar. Her interpretation of the Coen's fantastic script is just perfect. I believe this film will soon come to be recognized as one of the greatest films of all time.