The Coen Brothers' Crowning Achievement

Rating: 10/10 (31 August 2011)

I am not enamored of all of the Coen brothers' oeuvre: RAISING ARIZONA was fun; THE HUDSUCKER PROXY left me cold; so did BARTON FINK. So I wasn't a huge fan. I was, however, fascinated with Frances McDormand (I forget where I first saw her) at the time when FARGO was released, so I went to see it mostly because of her.
When I left the theatre I was sure that McDormand was going to win the Oscar and that the picture would too (I turned out to be right about McDormand; the movie unaccountably lost to the major bore THE English PATIENT). For what I saw that evening was a true original: the best combination of tragic drama and uproarious comedy I have ever seen put on film.
We begin with Jerry Lundegaard (William H Macy in another of his truly great performances), a nervous, twitchy little man who works at his father-in-law's car dealership. His father-in-law (hissingly played by Harve Presnell) views him with a contempt he does not bother to conceal.
Jerry is in some sort of unspecified financial trouble, and an attempt to borrow money from "Dad" predictably fails, so he comes up with a bizarre plot to have his wife kidnapped to extort the ransom money from the old man.
Jerry enlists the help of a couple of ex-cons referred to him by yet another ex-con. Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare), two of the most inept crooks in all of Minnesota, are the "help" enlisted by Jerry through his mechanic acquaintance Shep Proudfoot (Steven Reevis), who is himself an ex-con.
To be brief, things start to fall apart right from the get-go. Father-in-law unexpectedly agrees to the loan he had previously refused, so Jerry makes several abortive attempts to head off the kidnappers, but it is too late. The crime is afoot and Jerry's wife Jean (Kristin Rudrüd) has already been kidnapped. And in the process, the blundering kidnappers murder a pair of witnesses and a State Trooper.
Enter Police Chief Marge Gunderson (McDormand). When we first see her, she is asleep in bed beside her loving husband Norm (John Carroll Lynch), and is awakened by the telephone with news of the discovery of the bodies. As she sits up in bed, we see that she is hugely pregnant. Norm, a devoted spouse, won't let her leave without breakfast, which he cooks for her. Then she puts on her gear and waddles out to her patrol car, to find that the battery is dead ("Norm, prowler needs a jump!") Indefatigable and determinedly cheery and polite, yet every inch a Chief of Police, Marge is at once the nice lady next door about to have her first baby and a formidable cop with great powers of observation and a sixth sense that kicks in just when she needs it.
I am not going to reveal any more of the plot. This movie is a true original. It is bloody, there is a lot of violence, the two kidnappers are as depraved as they are incompetent, and there is a lot of death. But there are also a LOT of laughs, especially if you happen to be of Scandinavian descent. I grew up with people who talked just like some of the people in this movie, and to hear that cadence again made me giggle like a schoolgirl even when the dialogue was deadly serious.
The entire cast is perfection, but at the end of the day this is McDormand's film, and she deservedly won the Oscar for it. Which is quite an accomplishment considering that, though Marge is the female lead, she does not appear until thirty-three minutes into the film.
This is one of those movies that is in a class by itself. Its greatness lies in the fact that you can't categorize it.