Great story-telling!

Rating: Null/10 (18 February 2000)

I watched it again on tape and enjoyed it as well as in the cinema. While it never stirs the spirit or moves the emotions that an epic or even a great actioneer can, it so well-done with a minimum of 'movie-magic' that I was left, oddly, with the satisfaction that a parent feels on seeing a perfect score in the kid's gradebook.
There are superficial parallels with that great Coen film Raising Arizona (which Frances McDormand also appeared in) in that a kidnapping is the premise for the story-telling, and that Frances McDormand's small fiesty redhead cop character immediately reminded me of Holly Hunter's (who, of course, used to be the Coens' room-mate). Their partners in both shows are also big gentle slow-witted types, as are the amateurish bad-guy duos. The bleak settings of the Arizona desert and the Dakota winterscape also provide a similar sense of background scale which, hence, enhance the focus on the human element.
Fargo is far less self-indulgent in the fantastic humour of Arizona, yet retains the same smart cynicism. It has an eerily realistic European feel, with the natural acting and absence of MTV-style audio-visual enhancements. It generally "tells it as it is", from all the 'nature-of-life' little errors and screwups in most scenes, to the understated closing of the story. It champions honesty, integrity and the simple life, and how a little greed can disrupt the cycle of the good ol' American way of life.
Another great movie which Fargo reminds me of is Gorky Park (1983 with Hurt, Marvin and Dennehy), set in wintertime USSR and released back in the days of the Evil Empire, albeit with a different slant, but with a similarly peaceful bleakness in the feel, backdrop and moral-of-story.