Oh Yah!

Rating: 8/10 (9 November 2013)

To describe this film as complex would be redundant in its conception, when really it is a simple story. Although engaging in its depiction, Fargo gives this idea that there is a deeper meaning in it. The opening title sequence claims that this film is based on a true story, when really it's the culmination of many stories the Coen brothers have investigated. When promoting the film, in a 1996 interview with Charlie Rose, Charlie himself made a comment regarding the nature of the title sequence, and how it demonstrates how far the Coen brothers will go. It was a joke, and although it was jolly in spirit, the Coen's own take on the title was that it was battle between choosing Brainerd or Fargo. Obviously Fargo won that bout. But overall the tone of the film in its initial portrayal, is that it is a simple film, and the motives of the characters are simple to the extent that they can create a complexity within Fargo that we as an audience strive to understand them behind their own simplicity. As with any Coen Brother's film, there is an inevitable sense of tragedy within the story, and because it is shown in such a casual and forward manner, all we can do is laugh.
Taking place in the winter of 1987 at Fargo North Dakota, a pair of buffoons, Carl (Buscemi), a funny looking fella who can't shut up, and Gaear (Stomare) a mute who only speaks when he's hungry, are recruited by an even bigger schmuck. Jerry Lundergard (Macy), although both polite and simple, is two faced enough that he'll orchestrate a scheme to kidnap his own wife in order to extort his father in law, played dog heartedly by Harve Presnell, just to solve some of his financial troubles. Back home in Minneapolis, Jerry works as an executive sales manager for his Father in law, and even after a deal he proposed kicks in, his wife Jean (Rudred) is kidnapped. The sequence although portrayed with some humor, also carries with it an intensity in the moments of terror and panic Rudred shows in her erratic movements of fear.
Not too long after the kidnapping, a shooting takes place with three people being killed at Brainerd. By that time, half hour has passed, and then are we only introduced to the protagonist, Officer Marge Gunderson (McDormand). Being seven months pregnant, and carrying a truck load, Margi as her quaint husband Norm (Lynch) calls her, begins her investigation into the Brainerd murders. Marge is both calm and polite in her interactions with others, and even to the extent that she'll simply keep saying "Yah" and "Oh you betcha" when really she's bearing some forms of hostility and disappointment.
Although there is some disappointment to her search for justice, there is none within the overall portrayal of the character's the Coen Brother's have sketched in this combination of true stories. Each brings forth a unique level of oddness to the story that they transcends the simplicity of the film. A lot of the exterior scenes show a blank abyss of nothingness in the snow covered roads of North Dakota and Minneapolis, as the camera focus shots merely envelop the white snow during daylight, and even more illuminating during the night scenes, ushering a darker and more depriving tone within the film's more tragic elements. The interior scenes capture a much smaller and closed sense of existence within the simplicity of the characters, and their own understanding of the circumstances they encounter in their lives. One particular close-up of Marge as she contemplates the point of the Brainerd murders, never fully conceiving of why anyone would commit such an atrocity, and for money no less. She then comments on life and on the beautiful day in front of her. The detail of her introspection into human morality gives her greater depth and complexity, as normal as she may appear to be back home with her husband Norm. She questions the motives people have, and this merely represents her innocence, and at some tragic level her own ignorance.
As hard as it may be to understand why bad things happen, thinking it is simple merely drenches the curiosity with ignorance and reduces it to a more dismissible manner of existential contemplation. Fargo is brilliant and captivating in its odd sense of normality, capturing a peculiar and equally entertaining depiction of "Minnesota Nice" and the "Sing Song" regional accents. Every moment a character utters a "You betcha", or "Yah", its repetitiveness does not grow to be tiring ,but merely all the more entertaining in its ironic and often cynically delicious theme of Coen Brothers comedy. Over the course of the Coen Brother's careers, from films such as Blood Simple, or Barton Fink, which exemplify much darker tones, they managed to elaborate on the type of comedy they depict in each of their films. In the previously mentioned Charlie Rose interview, they couldn't really explain the comedy they conceive, only that they simply break from the more conventional standards. It's this break that stands out enough for anyone, fan or no fan to recognize within its perplexity. Fargo, as both a comedy and a thriller captures a humorous but brutal murder story that triggers a self-awareness within its protagonist Marge Gunderson, that although she questions the purpose of a such a transgression, she immediately returns to the normalcy of her life, showing very little change from experience. Some would label that as not a poor form of character development, when really it's more of accurate representation of a common folk the Coen's grew up around in the white abyss they lived in throughout their childhood.