Extra points for making me feel like an asshole

Rating: 10/10 (11 February 2005)

Fargo, for me, was quite a powerful experience, some of it, admittedly, on account of the latitude factor. You see, I happen to live a bit to the north, and quite a lot to the east of the movie setting (and Fargo is proof that an ocean cannot separate two nations united by hockey!). As such, I have seen for myself how the obsessive mentality of the west fuses with the "conditioned-by-the-elements" type characters of the north, to create some very confused individuals (this is stereotyping, but you get the idea).
They call it a dark comedy, but it would perhaps be more appropriate to say that it is a kind of line dance between the tragic and the comical, leaning one way and the other (usually both ways at once, actually) but never once stumbling. This extremely potent -if difficult- combination, coupled with an assortment of grand themes and some of the most interesting twists on archetypal characters I've seen, form what can only be called a masterpiece. There is no "fat", in fact, there's hardly a scene that isn't absolutely riveting, and the acting is generally good, with a few excellent performances. Oh, and I cried a little at the end. I did have one small problem the movie though.
Fargo isn't exactly culturally sensitive. I thought that "Mike Yanagita" the Asian-loser-pervert was a bit of a cheap shot, not to mention the violent, drugged out, native American mechanic named "Proudfoot", and many others. I had an especially "good laugh" (well, I did and I didn't) at the car chase scene. Many of you probably missed this, but "Gaer Grimsrud" (that's Peter Stormare's character -what kind of name is "Gaer Grimsrud" anyway?) exclaims "vittu" (that's the f-word for you non-Finns) in a Swedish accent while hunting down those unfortunate passers-by. Grimsrud is one mythical Finn you'll never see in a Finnish movie; although he really is just a ridiculously exaggerated Finnish stereotype, this breed of northerner certainly isn't treated with the same sympathy as the inhabitants of Brainerd! Now this stung a bit (especially when Grimsrud executed that poor adorable girl in the car wreck, that was heartbreaking), but I for one have no trouble swallowing my national pride -GENIOUS goes a long way to make up for the insults, and I get a feeling that it was all intentional anyway: a big fat **** you to political correctness.