Fargo was the 6th feature film directed by the Coen Bros, silver screen demiurges extraordinaires of meta and post irony pathos who first and last graced these pages a propos their 17th feature (Hail Caesar!, incidentally, not one of their best) back in May 2016.
Fargo tells the story - claimed in the opening credits to be true until Joel Coel disclosed, some 20 years later, it was only true it was a story - of car salesman Jerry Lundegaard's (William H Macy) circumvoluted plan to kidnap his wife Jean (incidentally Fargo, North Dakota native Kirstin Rudrüd) with the assistance of hired "operatives" loquacious Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and icily reticent Gaear Rimsrud (Peter Stormare) in order to collect ransom money to address financial difficulties, a plan that unsurprisingly turns sour and sours further at Jerry's every clumsy attempt to straighten it, leading to the hilarious demise or perdition of practically everyone involved as 8-month pregnant local policewoman Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) investigates and solves the case with the same deadpan workday matter-of-factness with which she buys the groceries.
Fargo has a plot Donald Westlake would have killed to write, dialogue Elmore Leonard would have stolen to steal, and comes wrapped in enough "Minnesota nice" and Northern Plains colloquialisms to keep you in stitches throughout. Dialogue example (from memory) (scene: Marge interrogating local hooker with whom Carl slept): hooker: "he was funny-looking"; Marge: "how so?"; hooker: "just funny-looking"; Marge: "can't you be more specific?" hooker: "(pause) I don't know, just funny-looking (pause) more than most people, even".
In my book, Fargo is 4th in a string of masterpieces in the Golden Age of the Coen Bros' canon, which stretches from Miller's Crossing (1990) to Intolerable Cruelty (2003). Chronologically, that is. Overall, I am not completely decided, but it might make the top 5, which, this being the Bros, is VERY high.
Fargo tells the story - claimed in the opening credits to be true until Joel Coel disclosed, some 20 years later, it was only true it was a story - of car salesman Jerry Lundegaard's (William H Macy) circumvoluted plan to kidnap his wife Jean (incidentally Fargo, North Dakota native Kirstin Rudrüd) with the assistance of hired "operatives" loquacious Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and icily reticent Gaear Rimsrud (Peter Stormare) in order to collect ransom money to address financial difficulties, a plan that unsurprisingly turns sour and sours further at Jerry's every clumsy attempt to straighten it, leading to the hilarious demise or perdition of practically everyone involved as 8-month pregnant local policewoman Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) investigates and solves the case with the same deadpan workday matter-of-factness with which she buys the groceries.
Fargo has a plot Donald Westlake would have killed to write, dialogue Elmore Leonard would have stolen to steal, and comes wrapped in enough "Minnesota nice" and Northern Plains colloquialisms to keep you in stitches throughout. Dialogue example (from memory) (scene: Marge interrogating local hooker with whom Carl slept): hooker: "he was funny-looking"; Marge: "how so?"; hooker: "just funny-looking"; Marge: "can't you be more specific?" hooker: "(pause) I don't know, just funny-looking (pause) more than most people, even".
In my book, Fargo is 4th in a string of masterpieces in the Golden Age of the Coen Bros' canon, which stretches from Miller's Crossing (1990) to Intolerable Cruelty (2003). Chronologically, that is. Overall, I am not completely decided, but it might make the top 5, which, this being the Bros, is VERY high.
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