Fargo

A film about idiots being awful to each other shouldn't be this appealing.  But it is.


In my personal variation of Desert Island Discs, where we play with movies too, exactly what comes to the island is constantly rotating.  But a select few have been on the list permanently.  One of them is Fargo.  It's a movie for a certain mood.  A black comedy, that strangest of genres, about a kidnapping in the snowbound american midwest.

The fantastically awkward William H Macy plays Jerry, a character who starts out feeling somewhat sympathetic to us through just how beleagured and trapped he is in his situation.  But that sympathy dissolves quickly the more we find out about him and his scheme to con his father in law through the kidnapping of his wife.

Not that anyone else is any better.  Jerry's wife is brainless and bland, his father in law a blustering arse who makes no attempt to hide his disdain for his son in law.  As everything begins to go wrong and the bodies begin to pile up, we watch through our hands, half horrified and half amused by this fawlty towers plot with blood.

The other two worthy of praise are Francis McDormand's Marge and Peter Stormare's Gaear Grimsrud.

In a film full of selfish idiot's, Marge stands as a beacon of light.  Her brains are fantastically demonstrated throughout the movie, particularly in the scene where she pieces together a crime on the scantest of evidence, but even more impressive are her scene's with her husband, which shows the kind of love rarely seen on film, more about companionship and support than white hot passion but lacking in nothing.  Her scene with Grimsrud as well, where she questions everything that's happened is fantastic as well.

Stormare's performance is astounding as well, near mute and incredibly menacing, Grimsrud brings the films most horrific moments (including the one you've heard about, in fact, it's unlikely you'll have heard Fargo without hearing about it, you know the one I mean) but more than anything, he's at his scariest when he says nothing.  The performance is one of barely restrained violence.  When that violence does show up, it's emotionless and callous.

Fargo is a masterpiece and probably my favorite of the Coen Brothers work.  You should see it.

Posted in: Coen, Fargo, Movie, Movie Review