One of the reasons Fargo lost to The English Patient at the Academy Awards in 1997 was that it was still consider an indie crime movie. It was compared to Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Yet, that's like comparing David Lynch to David Lean.
Tarantino likes to have his characters talk and what they have to say.
The Coen Brothers (Joel and Ethan) are interested in how their characters talk. People say "Ja" when they mean "yeah." There's a nice Scandanavian/Canadian/Midwest accent that everyone has that seems like it would be annoying, but isn't. Also, their conversations don't stick to the plot. An officer, relying information to his police chief, immediately starts inquiring about ice fishing. A scene in which a bartender tells a police officer about a shady character in his bar immediately turns to small talk about the weather. These conversations are quirky. They're how people actually talk.
Mike Nichols once told his acting class that anyone can read dialogue. The trick is making it seem like the character would really say it.
Fargo is not based on a true story, even though the crimes in the movie seemed inspired by real crimes in the Minneapolis area. But then, again half of the CSI episodes are inspired by real murder cases.
Fargo is a movie that is based on truth. The characters in my movie seem like real people. They probably are. A plot like Fargo's is so outrageous, we just assume it has to be based in reality somehow.
William H. Macy plays a Jerry Lundegaard, the executive sales manager, at his father-in-law's car dealership. He's into financial trouble. His father-in-law, Wade Gustafson (Harve Presnell) is a self-made millionaire and a bastard and a half. He's a bully who invites himself to supper. He lives to make things tough on people. He mocks his grandson, Scotty, for going to McDonald's after supper to hang out with his friends. He berates his wife Jean and Jerry for letting Scotty go. About the only person he listens to is his assistant, Stan Grossman (Larry Brandenberg), who more or less runs his company.
Jerry decides to hire to petty criminals Carl Showalter and Gaear Grimsrud (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife, so he can get ransom money from Wade to settle his debts. The only problem is that Carl and Gaear are two different criminals. Carl is a loud mouth lowlife, who can't even get a nice motel room to sleep with a prostitute. He uses the apartment of an associate. He's not smart. He tries to haggle with a parking lot attendant over a flat fee, not knowing that the agrument is going to make the attendant remember him more. Especially, after he was in the parking lot to steal a license plate.
Gaear is a cold-blooded murderer who doesn't talk much, constantly has a lit cigarette perched on his lips, and uses violence as the only answer.
Carl and Grear do the deed of kidnapping Jean, but get stopped by a Minnesota State Trooper in Brainerd, Minnesota on their way to a secluded cabin. Gaear shoots him dead, but a couple witnesses the crime, so Gaear chases them down and murders them as well.
That's the first thirty minutes of Fargo and it seems like a crime thriller on its own, but it's when Brainerd Police Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) is called to investigate the murders that the movie talks a change. Marge doesn't look like a police chief. For one thing, she's seven months pregnant and doesn't appear to be a police officer. She looks more like she should be a kindergarten teacher. But she knows her stuff. She can spot different foot prints. She knows a defensive wound with she sees one. And in a funny scene, she knows that "DLR" is shorthand for dealer license plates.
Marge doesn't cuss. She says, "Oh, jeez" and "For Pete's sake." She's quick to call people when they are rude or has she puts it, "snippy." But it's that duality that gives the movie it's human nature. She picks up her husband some night crawler's on the way back from a crime scene. She doesn't act mad when an old high school classmate, Mike Yanagita (Steve Parks) calls her late at night. When she goes to have a drink with him, she plays off her uncomfortable feeling when he wants to see next to her. When she is waiting in an office, she doesn't something we've all done in a doctor's exam room or other unfamiliar places. She looks around the room, fidgets with things on a desk for a second or two, and observes the pictures on the desk. Very few movies made before and since Fargo have put something like that in a movie.
She's a complete opposite to Jerry Lundegaard, who appears to be a nice guy, but is a weasel. I heard the character describe as Faust crossed with Willy Loman. That's not true. Willy Loman loved to be a salesman. For Jerry, it's a inconvenience. He keeps reminding people he's the executive sales manager at the car dealership, but it sounds like a made-up title. All his co-workers know he got the job for being the boss' son-in-law and they give him no respect. Imagine Jerry Lundergaard as an evil Ned Flanders who still says "The heck you mean?" and "You're darn tootin'." Jerry is a man to civil to be a criminal and too slimey to be a saint. He doesn't have a number for Carl and Gaear to contact them. He hadn't even though about the effect the kidnapping will have on Scotty. Macy does a brilliant double take when Stan asks him about his son. (The biggest problem with the Academy Awards was that they gave Macy a Supporting Actor nomination, even though it's really the lead role.) We never know how Jerry is overextended, but we learn through the movie that he can't manage things well. Jerry can't even work his way out of an impromptu interrogation with Marge. Most memorably is when a disgruntled customer calls him a "fucking liar" over sealant that was put on the car.
The scene involving the car customer is a rare one. He's quite angry. Many people accuse the Coen Brothers would overusing the f-word. However, only Carl, Grear, and Shep Proudfoot (Steve Reevis) use it. Shep is an ex-con who is an auto mechanic at the dealership who is the connection between Jerry and the kidnappers. Scotty uses it, but in angry and he is quickly call on for it.
The car customer says it, but in a way like he is trying to keep from using. His wife immediately calms him down.
One interesting thing to notice is the movie is how half of the scenes seemed to revolve around eating. Every other scene has something to do with food or beverages. Carl and Grear are drinking beers at the beginning when they meet with Jerry. Jerry and Wade discuss business and the ransom over meals. Marge's husband, Norm (John Carroll Lynch), brings her lunch. They go out to eat at a buffet. They eat potato chips in bed at night while watching a nature show on beetles feeding their children. Norm cooks Marge eggs while she gets ready for work. Scotty is eating cereal while his mother talks to him about his grades. Jerry interrupts his supervisor during his lunch. An auto mechanic eats a sandwich on the job. Marge wants to find a good restaurant in Minneapolis. Jean is watching a cooking show before she is kidnap. Graer wants to always eat pancakes. Carl wants a refill of his drink while out with a prostitute. Grear is eating a TV dinner when Carl returns with the ransom money.
A lot of people criticized Fargo for its blend of off-beat humor and gruesome violence. But the movie's violence is solely the work of Carl and Gaear. Gaear kills without conscience. Carl kills out of anger. He shoots Wade because he insisted on delivering the money rather than Jerry, which wasn't the plan. It doesn't help that he was just beaten and whipped by his own belt by Shep. If Carl had a gun in his possession, why doesn't he shoot Shep in his apartment? Because Carl isn't angry at Shep until after the beaten. Carl's all talk. He more or less doesn't mean to kill Wade, but Wade shoots back and Carl must kill him, as well as another parking lot attendant who just happens to meet him at the wrong time. One might wonder, why Carl doesn't just kill Gaear when he returns with the money. It surely would have saved his life. But Carl doesn't see Gaear as a threat until it's too late.
Two main points of criticism for the movie's violence is the killing off of Jean and the wood chipper scene where Gaear tries to dispose of Carl's body. First off, many recent movies like Van Helsing and Daredevil, to name a few, have killed off the female roles and no one has said anything. You think people would have a fit that Kate Beckinsale and Jennifer Garner die in movies, but no. Second, there is the wood chipper scene which is nothing new to movies. In Downtown, criminal Joe Pantoliani goes flying head first into a wood chipper and comes out a pile of goo on the other side and no one said anything. It's in Gaear's cold-blooded nature to kill. Maybe the criticism is over why Margie doesn't shoot him in the back, but only in the leg. Because Marge isn't trying to kill a suspect, just subdue one. I still wonder how a seven month pregnant woman is able to carry a wounded man, way bigger than her back to her squad car.
The Coen Brothers described the North Dakota/Minnesota area as Siberia with Hardee's restaurants. Fargo is set in the dead of winter, but unlike movies like The Thing and Eye See You, the snow and ice is used as a character (like in 2002's Wendigo) rather than a plot device. It does look like a desolate place to live, but like the movie's tagline reads: A lot can happen in the middle of nowhere.
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