Fargo (1996)

Fargo is a crime movie told from the point of view of the person who cleans up after it. Jerry Lundegaard needs money, and rather than ask his rich father in law for it he hires two men he has never met to kidnap his wife so he can split the ransom. It is a plan that only works if everyone behaves reasonably, which is the one thing people in a Coen movie never do. Within a day there are three bodies on a road outside Brainerd and Jerry is still smiling at customers on the lot.

What makes it more than a good thriller is who the Coens send to investigate. Marge Gunderson does not appear for the first half hour. When she does she is seven months pregnant, eating in her parka at the side of the road, and she is the smartest person in the movie by a wide margin. The Coens built a film full of greedy, panicking men and then handed it to someone who is simply good at her job and happy at home. That is the joke and also the whole argument.

It is very funny, and the comedy never lets you off. The politeness, the yah sure you betcha, the long silences over a plate of eggs, all of it keeps running while the violence gets worse. Barton Fink and Blood Simple are colder. Fargo has warmth in it, and the warmth is what makes the last twenty minutes land. You cannot be shocked by cruelty unless the movie has shown you something worth protecting.

The opening title card says the film is a true story and that names were changed at the request of the survivors. None of that is true. The Coens made it up. They have said they wanted the audience to watch it the way you listen to a story someone swears really happened, which changes what you accept. The lie is doing real work, because you forgive a strange plot if you think it actually occurred.

Jerry never says what he needs the money for. Not once in ninety eight minutes. Debt, a bad deal, something at the dealership, we are never told. That absence is deliberate and it is why the movie is not really about a scheme. It is about a man who cannot ask for help and would rather do something monstrous than admit he is in trouble.

Watch how the violence is staged. Almost all of it is sudden, badly done and over quickly, filmed in flat daylight or headlights with no music to carry it. There is nothing cool about any of it. Carl and Gaear are not professionals, they are two unpleasant men who are bad at this, and the movie refuses to make them impressive.

Then there is the speech in the squad car at the end, when Marge tells the man in her back seat that there is more to life than a little bit of money, and that she just does not understand it. It is the closest the Coens have come to saying what they think out loud, and they give it to a woman in a police parka on a snowy afternoon rather than to anyone with power.