On Marge's pregnancy

Rating: 10/10 (22 August 2013)

Marge Gunderson's pregnancy is seldom acknowledged in "Fargo," but a critical review almost has to mention it. It's a notable fact because, in moviedom, pregnancies are usually used symbolically or to raise the stakes. Audiences may react more strongly to things that happen to a pregnant woman than a non-pregnant woman, and screenwriters can generate quick, cheap pathos with a childbirth scene. But that's not what Joel and Ethan Coen do in "Fargo", and viewers may be forgiven for occasionally forgetting that the heroine is pregnant at all. It is only referenced lightly and in passing: a sight gag about how much buffet food she's eating, for example, or a tossed-off pretense for her to take a seat across from a potential suspect. The pregnancy doesn't limit her ability to do police work, and it doesn't mark her as undesirable to a man who wants to rekindle an old relationship. It may as well not be there, but it is there, and that makes it an interesting decision by the brothers Coen, who have too keen eyes for details to have done it absentmindedly. By rejecting the typical purposes of pregnancy in film, they show, perhaps, that it need have no special meaning; Marge is a cop investigating a triple homicide in a small Midwestern town, and that's all we really need to know. Whether she's pregnant or drinks coffee or eats eggs are just details.