Directed by: Joel Coen FARGO
(1996)a review by Rebecca Wan
Written by: Ethan Coen & Joel Coen
Cast : William H. Macy (Jerry Lundegaard), Steve Buscemi (Carl Showalter), Frances McDormand (Marge Gunderson), Peter Stormare (Gaear Grimsrud), Harve Presnell (Wade Gustafson), John Carroll Lynch (Norm Gunderson), Kristin Rudrud (Jean Lundegaard), Tony D enman (Scotty Lundegaard), Steve Park (Mike Yanagita), Steve Reevis (Shep Proudfoot), Warren Keith (Reilly Diefenbach)
Produced by : Gramercy Pictures/ Gramercy Pictures (distributor)/ PolyGram/ Working Title Films
Rating : *** out of *****
Theatres: Lido Classics and Jade Classics. R (A).
MURDER MOST FOILED
I guess I'm not the best person to be reviewing this film because I don't know anything about the almighty Coen Brothers or their beloved film noir style of directing. I didn't watch the much talked about BLOOD SI MPLE (1984), which this film is supposed to be a partial remake (or *retake*) of, and I didn't watch the much acclaimed HUDSUCKER PROXY either. I *did* watch RAISING ARIZONA, but the only thing I remember about that movie is the image of Nicolas Cage running down the center of an empty road with a stocking on his head. He was trying very hard to grab a pack of diapers while being chased by some nasty-looking bikers.
The reason why I liked FARGO is because it is one of two things: it's either a normal look at an odd small town caught up in a murder caper, or an odd look at a small town caught up in a normal murder caper. Either way, you get the feeling about a third way through the film that although things are still making sense, you've somehow been steering a few degrees off course into an alternate and slightly insane universe. It's a feeling we all need more often. I guess it's a little like drinking a few too many beers and looking at people and life in general in a whole different light. Of course I'm only speculating because that's never happened to me before.
FARGO begins with a nervous, weak-willed husband, played by William Macy, who's hatched a mostly harmless plot that he's certain will yield him a large amount of money. He needs this dough to make an independent stand against his domineering father-in-law, who tends to step all over him in front of Macy's wife. He meets with Steve Buscemi and Brian Boehlke and asks them to kidnap his wife in order that he may collect a huge ransom from her father. The kidnapping itself goes all right, but things immediately being to fall apart after that.
While heading towards their hideout, the kidnappers encounter highway traffic authorities; meanwhile Macy has a hard time fending off his controlling father-in-law's insistence that they bring in the police.
But FARGO isn't so much about a scheme gone wrong then what's wrong, or different, with the people involved in the scheme. Steve Buscemi, who looks like he smells really bad throughout the film, is wonderful as the city hitman unable to handle his stony co-kidnapper who likes to shoot people a lot, or the unfathomably weird behaviour of the small townsfolk they are eventually surrounded by. But it is really Frances MacDormand, who plays the pregnant, thinking detective-sheriff who has to track them down, who steals the show.
MacDormand's character is Marge Gunderson. Her deputies and friends have names like Gaear Grimsrud, Wade Gustafson and Reilly Diefenbach. The moment the movie shifts its focus from the kidnappers to their law-enforcing hunters, it seems, the audience is transported from Middle America into a strange, alpine village on some snow-covered slope. Lundergaard's son even practices the accordian instead of the insufferable violin or trombone, and has a poster of an mountain lad doing the same on a snow-covered mountain on the back of his door. Everyone in Brainerd--yes, Brainerd--the town where Buscemi and friend plan to hide out in, speaks with singsong, Swedish accents liberally sprinkled with laconic "yahs." They also scratch their heads, move slowly, and have vacant looks on their faces half the time. Despite this, the steady, logical deductions of the implacable Gunderson, which bring her closer and closer to her targets, are in strong contrast with the increasing distress of Buscemi and car salesman Macy, who, unable to handle the coordinates of their deteriorating sitautions, wade further and further into disaster.
FARGO is a slowly paced movie that escalates exponentially in farcical suspense. By its conclusion, everyone is blythely chopping people up, shooting everyone else and burying things in places that not even they would remember to find. But the desperation with which all this is done seems somehow natural by this point of time, because FARGO is an exercise in acclimatizing its audience towards embracing the surreal. I myself felt I might leave the theatre to buy a shiny axe so that I might wave it about threateningly the next time a 106 bus driver decided to round a curve like he was Tom Cruise in DAYS OF THUNDER. FARGO's stark visuals, comprising solemn, arresting longshots of vehicles traversing the snow-blanketed landscapes, also lends a sense of quiet bleakness to the movie that deadens the "realness" of the hysteria that enshrouds the film's conclusion.
So although I didn't know anything about the Coen brothers except that they wear glasses, share the writing and directing of their films (though the credits say differently), that FARGO won for best directing at Cannes and that they're generally known for the weird films they make, I still liked FARGO quite a bit. I guess what I'm trying to say is that so will you, probably, because in the end FARGO isn't all that weird. It's something you can almost relate to in a peculiar way, and although there is only some nudity and an unusual sort of violence (not the limb-ripping, bone-crunching, blood-fountains type we so know and love from the Stallone "genre" <--his words, not mine), I'm still recommending this film for people with a different movie-going experience in mind.
THE FLYING INKPOT's RATING SYSTEM:
* Wait for the video.
** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Gotcha!
*** Pretty good, bring a friend.
**** Amazing, potent stuff.
***** Perfection. See it twice.
Rebecca Wan really hates "Growing Up."
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