Fargo

Joel and Ethan Coen, USA 1995, 97 minutes

Car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) is having money troubles - he needs lots of it, and he needs it fast. But, not to worry... he has a cunning plan. Jerry hires a pair of cabbagepatch thugs to kidnap his doting, personality-deficient wife in the hopes of scooping up the substantial ransom stumped up by his rather well-to-do father-in-law.

Things start to go wrong when a cop and a couple of unfortunate yokels are in the wrong place at the wrong time, resulting in their deaths at the hands of the trigger-happy pair. With an ever soaring death-toll Jerry's henchmen put up the price. Heavily pregnant police officer Margie Gunderson (Frances McDormand) gets on the case of the deceased cop. The trail leads her to the dead-end town of Fargo.

Fargo must have been a terror of a film to shoot owing to the fast approaching North Dakota Spring melting the snow from beneath the production crew's feet. The Coen Brothers are less than honest from the outset beginning the film with the statement "based on a true story". Naughty boys!

Review by Jane Birch
Written for EUFS Programme Autumn 2004

Fargo is the most recent Coen brother's offering and is unarguably impressive. Nervy car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) decides to raise funds by faking his wife's kidnapping in order to extract a ransom from her wealthy father. He hires a couple of incompetent crooks (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stomare) to do the job for a cut of the ransom money. The whole kidnapping goes disastrously wrong as the two kidnappers manage to screw up practically every encounter with the outside world. Five months pregnant cop, Marge Gunderson (Oscar winning Frances McDormand), is soon on the case, deducing her way to the kidnappers. A pretty accomplished black comedy emerges as the bodies pile up in snow-scaped Brainerd, Minneapolis.

It is a film devoid of conventional glamour focusing instead on the way of a community. Everything in Fargo is tinged with a kind of innocence and provinciality. Sing-song ScandicAmerican accents haunt every exchange:

`He was kinda funny looking.'
`Yah?'
`Oh yah. You know, funny looking'.

The film is full of such brilliantly bland conversations and accompanying eccentric characterisations.

In the opening titles the Coen brothers claim to be depicting a true story. Seen as Minnesota is the Coens' home state, the impression is more of an affectionate, if mischievous tribute. In the real-life town of Fargo residents were apparently deeply upset by the amount of crime depicted in the film (after a series of burglaries last year, police had to campaign to get the city's residents to actually lock their doors and windows when they go out).

Fargo is an impressive piece of storytelling littered with fantastic performances. It is a typical Coen brothers film in that it is easily separable from the majority of its fellow American releases. It skilfully blends a mix of comedy, thriller and horror as have previous Coen brothers movies. The plot is gleefully twisted and the characters are, characteristically for the Coens, unconventional. Worth watching for Frances McDormand's performance alone, this is an exceptionally good film and utterly different from anything else released in the same year.

Review by Melanie J Baker
Taken from EUFS Programme 1997-98