The Coen Brothers have released 18 films to date, including “No Country for Old Men,” “Raising Arizona” and “The Hudsucker Proxy,” almost all of which have been major successes. I recently had the joy of watching their 1996 film “Fargo,” set in the frosty plains of Minnesota and North Dakota.
The Coen Brothers’ black comedy opens with a somewhat casual scene of Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) entering a bar in Fargo, N.D., where he meets Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare). Lundegaard plans to hire Showalter and Gaear to kidnap his wife (Kristen Rudrüd); this scene sets off a chaotic chain of events as Lundegaard’s plan goes horribly wrong.
The film is allegedly based on true events. The film opens with the text: “This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.”
Police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) later investigates a triple homicide committed by Showalter and Grimsrud on a highway outside of Brainerd, M.N. Her charming, naïve character is unique and quirky, and the accent heard throughout the film leaves a lasting impression; decades later, locals continue to abide by tourist requests to say “Yah, you betcha” amongst other quotes from the movie.
William H. Macy’s performance as Lundegaard is wonderful, and Buscemi and Stormare both excel in their roles as violent hitmen, Stormare especially. Watching all three scramble to desperately feign innocence as Gunderson slowly bumbles her way to the truth is both entertaining and believable. McDormand’s role as a naïve, overly polite police chief is perfectly cast. The bleak atmosphere and desperate, nasty characters combined with the exaggerated accent and comedic scenes throughout the film make it a dark but enjoyable movie; a touch of subtle poetry towards the end of the film leaves a lasting impression on the viewer. It inspired a number of spin-offs, including a television series of the same name and the film “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter.”
Overall, Fargo is one of my favorite films. Violent, quirky, disturbing and darkly funny, it is doubtlessly one of the Coen Brothers’ highest-rated movies, earning an overall extremely positive rating (94% on the review website Rotten Tomatoes). McDormand’s performance was praised by critics from Entertainment Weekly, The New Yorker, the Dallas Observer and USA Today. It received seven Oscar nominations during the 69th Academy Awards, winning Best Actress for McDormand and Best Original Screenplay for the Coens.