It's 1987, in Minnesota during winter. Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) is a (frankly deservedly) struggling car salesman swimming in debt. But he has a solution - or so he thinks. He's travelled to Fargo, North Dakota to enlist two small-time crooks, the chatty but nebbish Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and the very taciturn Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare), to kidnap his wife Jean (Kristin Rudrud) so he can swindle a hefty ransom out of his affluent father-in-law Wade Gustafson (Harve Presnell) to get himself back into the black. It should be a cinch, but naturally when the two incompetent crooks start bickering it quickly crumbles like a hay house meeting the Big Bad Wolf. Cue the eight-months-pregnant local sheriff Marge Gunderson (the delightful Frances McDormand in her first Oscar-winning performance, despite not appearing until 30 minutes into the 94-minute movie), who now must uncover how and why it all turned pear-shaped.
After acclaimed minor hits like Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990) and Barton Fink (1991), brothers Joel and Ethan Coen permanently broke through with this ruthlessly entertaining concoction of jet-black humour and unflinching violence from independent studios PolyGram and Working Title. Nominated for seven 1996 Academy Awards including Best Picture (which I think it deserved over the snoozefest that I consider The English Patient) and Director, Fargo both reinvented and redefined the crime caper. Based not, as the film's opening titles claim, on a true murder in North Dakota but on that of Richard Crafts' murder of his wife Helle in Connecticut in 1986 in which her remains were shoved through a woodchipper, it remains their best-known work and rightfully so. Their Oscar-winning screenplay gives just the right balance to the humour and violent pathos, with very careful character development in the middle. Joel's direction is even better, developing mounting tension even over numerous silent stretches and, with the help of Roger Deakins' haunting cinematography and Carter Burwell's beautiful score, it ultimately shows just what a fitting backdrop and metaphor the wintry landscape is for the cruelty that occurs there.
William H. Macy, nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, had maybe the hardest role here because Jerry had to seem duplicitous enough to orchestrate such a crime but also adequately desperate so we could somewhat sympathise with him, and Macy pulls that off. Buscemi and Stormare make one of the funniest dysfunctional duos in recent cinema history, particularly in one scene where a bored Carl frustratedly tries to converse with Gaear while they're driving, and Presnell is suitably assertive as Wade. But they are all no match for Frances McDormand (Mrs. Joel Coen), one of the greatest actors (male or female) of our time. As Marge, drinking coffee and expecting her water to break at any moment, she delivers a masterpiece of comic subtlety that ultimately gives way to a totally convincing temperament of fear and vulnerability in the film's infamously grim climax. It's the role she was born to play.
For a sad but interesting postscript: while most viewers eventually realised Fargo wasn't really based on a true story, one Japanese office worker named Takako Konishi reportedly didn't. In 2001 an urban legend was born that alleged she travelled to North Dakota to find the missing money Carl buried there, under the false impression that nobody had collected it. That was later disproven (she'd actually gone there to commit suicide in the snow because she'd visited the place before with a former flame and loved it), but for better or worse the legend has stuck. Fargo later spawned a successful TV spin-off series, but it didn't need that to remain an absolute classic. It's not for all tastes, but do I recommend it anyway? As the locals would say: "Oh, yaaah, you betcha!"
William H. Macy, nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, had maybe the hardest role here because Jerry had to seem duplicitous enough to orchestrate such a crime but also adequately desperate so we could somewhat sympathise with him, and Macy pulls that off. Buscemi and Stormare make one of the funniest dysfunctional duos in recent cinema history, particularly in one scene where a bored Carl frustratedly tries to converse with Gaear while they're driving, and Presnell is suitably assertive as Wade. But they are all no match for Frances McDormand (Mrs. Joel Coen), one of the greatest actors (male or female) of our time. As Marge, drinking coffee and expecting her water to break at any moment, she delivers a masterpiece of comic subtlety that ultimately gives way to a totally convincing temperament of fear and vulnerability in the film's infamously grim climax. It's the role she was born to play.
For a sad but interesting postscript: while most viewers eventually realised Fargo wasn't really based on a true story, one Japanese office worker named Takako Konishi reportedly didn't. In 2001 an urban legend was born that alleged she travelled to North Dakota to find the missing money Carl buried there, under the false impression that nobody had collected it. That was later disproven (she'd actually gone there to commit suicide in the snow because she'd visited the place before with a former flame and loved it), but for better or worse the legend has stuck. Fargo later spawned a successful TV spin-off series, but it didn't need that to remain an absolute classic. It's not for all tastes, but do I recommend it anyway? As the locals would say: "Oh, yaaah, you betcha!"
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