Very nearly a darn toot'n' classic...but not quite

Rating: 8/10 (28 August 2007)

Tarantino without the fractured narrative. Fargo is the kind of film that people call "quirky", which is ironic in the light of its opening claim to being a true story  I had my suspicions the instant it said that the events were portrayed exactly as they happened, a tall order for any film. While I think it's flawed in places, it's still an extraordinary peep into an enclosed environment; while some films like to point out small-town suburbia as a front for some seriously freaky goings on, the great strength of Fargo is that it undermines that sense of juxtaposition; it deals with life in a sleepy town and an investigation into a series of brutal murders without really presenting any major difference between them.
In many thrillers setting is used to box the story in, to provide clear boundaries that provide the characters with their definitions and beyond which they cannot pass. A lot of film noir is an example of this. With the white snowdrifts of a Midwestern winter though, Fargo appears to take place in a void: it has no need of boundaries since there is nothing for it to mark, no sense of a place where here stops being here and becomes there. In some indoor shots the outside world is literally featureless, as if the entire film takes place inside a giant ping pong ball. This sense of blankness is far more isolating than any found in the kind of crime film that romanticises the idea of Mexico as a criminal's escape route, turning it into an Eden-like haven.
The atmosphere of the film comes from the sense that every character in the film feels like they belong precisely there: they are so much an intrinsic part of their setting, unlike the usual stereotype of bringing in the hero from outside so that they can in effect become the audience, pointing out the place's oddities from an external perspective. Fargo gives the viewer credit for noticing this for themselves, without really having to actively reinforce the sense of place and culture. Characters are allowed to be people first and narrative devices second: they sit around repeating themselves and stating the obvious, while the camera impassively lingers on shots to record them shuffle around doing whatever it is that they do. The best illustration of the film's dynamic is its leading lady, the very ordinary Marge Gunderson (a fantastic performance by Frances McDormand), who slips between her homely personal life and her gruesome professional responsibilities so smoothly that there ceases to be any delineation between the two. Her character's slow, pregnant waddle becomes her greatest asset: she is someone so unbelievably good at her job that she has no need to actually look the part and hit all the usual marks. Hers is not a role that calls for an Ellen Ripley, and this justifies the film's endless  and endlessly charming  digressions here there and everywhere, which never feel like they're disrupting the plot.
Perhaps it's no surprise then that the lease convincing characters are the out-of-towners, the two thugs (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) hired to kidnap a housewife (Kristin Rudrüd) so that her husband (William H. Macy) can collect a fortune in ransom money from her rich father (Harve Presnell). Carl (Buscemi) shows up the film's Tarantino influence most strongly, with his rambling monologues deliberately about nothing. However, this has a tendency to compromise the film's sense of authenticity since his dialogue is nowhere near as natural as Tarantino's; this is screen writing taken to the opposite extreme, with a character casting about for topics of conversation for little reason other than for the sake of not talking about the plot. Far more interesting is Stormare's near mute, Gaear. Carl is the brains of the pair; Gaear is not the brawn, but the will. He is the one who takes matters into his own hands to resolve a problem, but his motivations lie far deeper. While Buscemi's snippy crook is motivated fairly unambiguously by money, Gaear seems indifferent to it. He kills out of necessity, convenience, sometimes just pure whim, while other times it is genuinely impossible to imagine his reasons, making Marge's final words to him  not understanding how he can kill people just for money  all the more resonant.
For all its charm and comedy, Fargo is a sometimes distressing film. Innocent people get killed or bereaved, and they evoke sympathy because of their relentless likability. Even Jerry (Macy) still feels like a nice guy in the face of his vile and cowardly crime, because he's so helpless and pathetic. The brutal violence is shocking in Fargo not because of its nature but because these are real characters getting killed rather than nameless meat-puppets who exist merely to provide action scenes to titillate the audience. If only the film had tighter characterisation of its lead villain, we could be looking at a classic: with that slightly weak link in place though, Fargo is merely very good.