by David Schleicher
HECK!
I first saw Fargo when I was in high school. I loved it, but I could barely describe it.
And those accents!
In college…we couldn’t get enough of it. Everyone had to get initiated into the cool club of hipster film watchers who could quote it and speak the lines and make up their own lines in….those accents. It was a pre-YouTube meme.
But Fargo – what was it then? Can its suchness be defined by what we see on screen?
Let’s examine – This is a true story; they lie to us.
The first image is of obscured white-washed wilderness. Is this a desert? No. There’s snow. A tow truck.
We hear Carter Burwell’s noirish fairy tale of a music score.
This is F A R G O, they announce.
Where is it?
Fargo is hardly in its own film, present for only one scene – a middle-ground for a meeting amongst Jerry Lundegard (William H. Macy), a funny-lookin’ fella named Carl (Steve Buscemi) and an unseemly near-silent murderous Nordic lug (Peter Stormare).
The rest of the film takes place in Brainerd and the Twin Cities.
Fargo.
What is it now?
What starts outs as an off-kilter crime film where a botched kidnapping turns into “this execution type deal” evolves into a wicked black comedy and then transcends itself to become a philosophical meditation on life.
Perhaps Fargo is a state of mind?
“There’s more to life than a little money,” our heroine Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) tells that murderous lug after catching him disposing of the kidnapped and his funny lookin’ partner by way of the infamous wood chipper. “Doncha know that? I just don’t understand it.”
Fargo, oh you betcha! It’s funny as hell but it is so much more than just the accents.
Jerry Lundegard doesn’t start with the “Heck d’ya means” and “Oh geezes” until he becomes increasingly more exasperated by his own escalating incompetence in attempting to cover up a series of bumbling crimes. Ya darn tootin’ he’s mad.
Marge, on the other hand, is straight to the point from the get-go. “I think I’m gonna baarfe.” Her powers of deduction lead her to nab her men even while 7-months pregnant.
Heck, she’s got super powers – and no wonder Mike Yanagita gets all weepy when he thinks about what a super lady she’s always been.
But it’s those small moments that make it undeniably funny – Marge’s interview of the goofy gum-smacking truck-stop hookers, the idiotic zombified niceness of the cashier at the diner where Jerry convinces his father-in-law to pay a ransom on a kidnapping Jerry arranged, and the complete disinterest of the call girl Carl tries to impress by taking her to the Carlton Celebrity Room to see Jose Feliciano.
The Coens also displayed a hilarious knack for sucking the seriousness out of dire situations, like when Jerry tries to comfort his son Scotty after Scotty’s mother is kidnapped and on the back of the kid’s bedroom door is a poster for “The Accordion King” – a fat smiling idiot in the Alps looking down on this hot mess in the Twin Cities.
But there’s darkness underneath the polite weirdness of the Upper Midwest. And the film bounces back and forth between violence and absurdity with a devilishly self-aware aplomb.
Heck, there’s even a nod to Blue Velvet when Marge and Norm are watching a bark-beetle nature special while lying in bed.
And then there are those mallards, not unlike David Lynch’s beetle-eating robin at the end of Blue Velvet – Norm’s mallards. Symbols of strength, justice and the straight path.
After Marge rounds-up the bad guys, Norm announces one of his mallard paintings is going to be put on the 3-cent stamp.
“Heck, Norm, we’re doing pretty good,” Marge says.
And for all of its stand-out comedic moments, there’s no moment more earnest and true than that.
And it’s that simple truth that makes Fargo, beyond the belly laughs and the accents and the wood chipper, the greatest thing the Coen Brothers have ever given us.
–
Comedy?
Discuss.
I think we could be having the same discussion we had with The King Of Comedy in terms of affiliation. The final decision must be made by each viewer subjectively.
Fargo (along with Seven and The Usual Suspects) was the movie that really got me seriously interested in cinema during my late teen years. I find that each subsequent viewing rewards less and less though. The Coen’s have easily surpassed this film with later dramas (with much greater depth) like No Country For Old Men, The Man Who Wasn’t There, A Serious Man, and (in terms of comedy) The Big Lebowski. At times Fargo feels very one note with the same funny accent punch-line bit used over and over. I still consider it a superb film, but not quite the masterpiece it’s been declared.
A Serious Man was a comedy, too! Their best since Fargo in my mind.
But there’s darkness underneath the polite weirdness of the Upper midwest. And the film bounces back and forth between violence and absurdity with a devilishly self-aware aplomb…
Jaimie, I can well understand your issues with this as a comedy countdown choice, though in the end the Coens’ quirky black comedy humor seems at home within the liberal parameters of this project. David Schleicher has really left the box with a review unlike any other so far in this countdown, with a wholly impressionistic piece that makes the strongest case one could imagine for how dialogue is the vital ingredient for the atypical Coens film that I do believe is probably their most popular, one that narrowly edges out the much awarded NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.
As I was preparing and submitting this comment I just for the first time saw Maurizio’s comment above. I do absolutely agree with him (Maurizio) that in the end the decision is up to the voter, as has been the case throughout the venture.
Labels labels labels again. Artificial constructs can be helpful, but let’s remember that they exist for convenience, not as anything meaningful in and of themselves. The pursuit of any such discussion is merely a distraction (i.e., a waste of time) except for residual reference to a work of art and its meaning or value. In other words, if the discourse leads us to a better understanding of a film’s messages, I’m okay with it. But if we’re talking about where to store a DVD on a shelf — comedy or drama? — a film with both elements will only lead to confusion as there will always be people who end up having to look in two different spots.
hahaha love it Pierre! I am presently clearing a new spot on my wall for comedy-drama “hybrids.” Though I firmly support the choice of FARGO for this polling, and your philosophy in general, I will have this excellent film as one of the first to take residence on the shelf!
It’s a comedy. Period.
What starts outs as an off-kilter crime film where a botched kidnapping turns into “this execution type deal” evolves into a wicked black comedy and then transcends itself to become a philosophical meditation on life.
David, I can’t imagine a better essay on Fargo than this one. You’ve captured the story, the dialogue, the meaning, the comedy, the drama and the irony — all while communicating with great skill and subtlety the tone of the film. Great work!
Thanks, Pierre! This has long been a favorite movie of mine but I have not had the opportunity until now to write extensively on it. Yours is high praise indeed and I truly appreciate it.
Roger Ebert wrote this abut FARGO in his original review of the film in 1996:
“FARGO reminds me why I love movies so much”
I saw this on a snowy night with Sam the Monday after the film was released and we battled horrifically inclement weather, almost dangerous to be honest, because the big guy was so taken back by this movie, and so enthused, that he was dying to share his discovery with anyone he thought would find it as brilliant as he.
The visual dichotomy, the music, the blistering script that ping-pongs between high octane dramatics and horror and is leveled with a kind of bizarro, ethnic sweetness that becomes funnier and funnier as the story unravles out of control are all, well, PERFECT. The performances from every actor, whether big or small, are all spot on and find their footing in a kind of relaxed, familiar state that warrants maximum uniqueness. Quite frankly, there’s really not another movie like it and it even seperates itself as a one-of- a-kind piece that, while familiar to the Coen’s prior work in the sense that it’s origins are seemingly from another planet, is nowhere in the vast solar system that houses modern classics like their MILLERS CROSSING BARTON FINK, RAISING ARIZONA and BLOOD SIMPLE. It’s a film that bares the logo “A COEN BROS FILM” but is about as far removed from every other picture they have made by leaps and bounds.
The arguments on whether or not FARGO is the Coen’s BEST film have been raging ever since it’s release and it’s a testament to the films near perfection and one of kind flavor that it’s alwys on the short list of the two or three finest from there canon (it’s usually number one with them and I’m pretty much in agreement). For me, it’s the standard of excellence I think they, the Brothers themselves, adhere to and look to when they try to best themselves with every new picture they make. FARGO is, certainly one of the films OTHER film-makers look to for inspiration when trying to tell stories and it’s most certainly the movie they go to when trying to figure out how to make a great film with the limited funding many newbies are given for their first or second effort. The simply economy of this film is a liberator rather than a noose and the brothers deliver the tightest 90 minutes of cinema in the comedy genre during the period of the 1990′s.
Is it a comedy?
Many people debate this and my own personal take on all of this is in the affirmative. The skewering of the ethnic representations in the film are not so much malicious as they are a realistic representation of the kind of hilarity that surfaces in everyday life and I think it’s to the brothers great credit that they KNEW this area and demographic was not somethuing other film-makers had ever focused on. Woody Allen usually goes for the upper-class Jewish intellectuals of New York City, where Albert Brooks looks more at the middle class Jewish experience combined with a kind of neurosis fueled by the idea of wanting to be upper class. Where I come from THOSE are kinds of people that I come into contact with everyday. Where the Coen’s grab the brass ring is in the presentation of people that are familiar to THEM and their honesty in portraying the everyday comedy that comes along with their manner of speech and daily lives, but that they were smart enough to know that WE, outside their world, their comfort zone, had never before seen anything like it.
Is FARGO a comedy?
It’s a comedy and a great one of that. It’s a comedy of manners. It’s a comedy about everyday life.
I have to agree with the sentiments of Roger Ebert and say that FARGO reminds ME why I LOVE movies so much…
Dennis – I couldn’t agree more with Ebert. He got it. I got it. You got it.
I am in total agreement that FARGO is a comedy, albeit a very black one. Whatever else it is – a great movie, a thriller – it’s also funny (although, I will admit if pressed, after a condescending manner.) David, your post here really struck a chord with me. I was about twice your age when I first saw this film in the theater, along with other moviegoing friends who were also in their mid-to-late 30s at the time. But we had the same kind of reaction as you and your friends. I can’t begin to tell you how many conversations among us in subsequent years have managed to work in like ” Blood has been shed, Jerry.” (with the requisite rejoinder “Heck ya mean?”) or “He’s fleein’ the interview!” or “You’re such a super lady!” or “You got no cause to be snippy with me, sir – I’m just doin’ my job” or “You gotta have a breakfast, Margie,”….. or , well you get the idea. It’s just that kind of film that builds up this sort of “secret password” camraderie among people who love it. You captured that aspect of FARGO exceedingly well.
Pat – so true. I have friends with whom years can pass between us and all we have to do is quote Fargo and we are together again as if no time has passed at all.
Again, the voters define what comedy is, and that’s the only way the countdown can work. I’ve always seen Fargo as a satire of crime fiction in general and perhaps particularly the wave of mid-90s cool crime movies of which Pulp Fiction was just one. If the Coens have one big point to make over and over again, it is that criminals are stupid and nothing like the invincible masterminds they may imagine themselves to be. While the film has long been criticized (like the Coens throughout their career) for being contemptuous toward the ordinary folk of Brainerd, that criticism misses the point the brothers direct against the schemers who expect to put something over on everyone else. It’s the people who think themselves smarter or more ruthless than everyone else that end up looking the most pathetic.
Just read a few days ago that the Coens may make a TV series based on the movie, but hasn’t that been predicted ever since the film came out?
Once I realized this film was on the list, I went back to my own website, where I long ago listed my 150 greatest comedies. And, as amusing as I sometime find FARGO, I ultimately find it a tragedy with no clear winners, and no clear comic figures except to say that they’re funny in how they speak or react. For me, the Coens have much greater comedies: in fact, BIG LEBOWSKI, RAISING ARIZONA tower over FARGO in terms of laughs, and so does, in a meta way, something as black as BARTON FINK. I love FARGO as a movie, but it is resolutely not a comedy. As for the notion that any one thing can be considered a comedy if enough of the audience thinks it’s one, then I would posit the notion that, as the Zodiac killer once said, THE EXORCIST is the greatest comedy of all time. The idea of what is funny now has changed, particularly in America, where many of us find true warmth corny and embarrassing, and insulting harshness, not matter how disgusting or inhumane (adjective I do not use to describe FARGO) to be the makings of a laugh riot. This, too, is a tragedy. If, at the end of my first viewing of FARGO, someone would have asked me if it was a comedy, I would have said this: “It was occasionally funny. But it was a story about destructive desperation. And I don’t find that anything to laugh at.”
Dean – Fargo is not a tragedy. Criminals were caught. Idiots were brought to justice. Good people were left feeling good about their lives (witness Marge and Norm in the closing scene). It was a comedy of manners. A comedy with a very dark streak. But a comedy, nonetheless – and a very hopeful drama at worst.
No, FARGO is about the Lundergard family, which is caught in the grips of the father’s understandable desperation in being crushed by his father-in-law’s unfair dislike of him for stealing his daughter away. Never is the Harve Bennett character ever portrayed as someone who’s willing to give Jerry the benefit of the doubt. Early on, he says: “Jean (and your son) never have to worry.” This is the attitude that sets the whole crime in motion, and this is the tragedy. As for the criminals, both are sociopaths of a very different order, and I wonder if Buchemi’s character had ever seen the sort of blood that landed in his lap and face. Marge and Norm are indeed lovely people. But the movie isn’t about them. It’s about Jerry Lundergard, and his fall from a relative grace, and I find that tragic. At any rate, there’s no way no how not ever not by a million words or shots that you could convince me that this terrific movie, or the also terrific A SERIOUS MAN is anywhere near funnier than THE BIG LEBOWSKI, or about 200 other non-Coen movies I could name for you.
Dean – very interesting perspective. I thought the movie was about The Gundersons and the Lundegaards. The Gundersons were smart and good and common and pure. The Lundegaards were dumb and greedy and jealous and tainted. Look who won. The comedy was in their interactions with each other and in their interactions with the evil idiocy of the characters played by Buscemi and Stormare. Again I ask you to look at who was home and comfy and pregnant and happy with their lives after some introspection at the end of the film – the Gundersons. It was a happy ending where justice was served and the good people won out over the stupid people. Yes, the Coens judged the characters…and I found them just in their judgements.
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Nice work David! Yeah I honestly can’t see how anyone would not see this as a comedy and a terrific one at that. The Coens clearly have a history of making comedies so it should not come at any surprise that they made one here. It just missed my cut as I placed it somewhere around 65 on my list. Not sure, but this just might be McDormand’s best role even though she’s had some other solid performances….not to mention in Blood Simple. I like this film a great deal…and it’s really funny.