Movie Re-Viewed: Some Thoughts on Fargo
February 19th, 2005,It was nearly ten years ago that Joel and Ethan Coen’s film Fargo was released. Because no other movie–and perhaps no other cultural production–has so defined the region in the public consciousness, this 1996 film seems a necessary topic for this column. I recently watched the film again, and what follows are some thoughts on it.
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The great movie of the Upper Midwest has yet to be made. The Coen brothers come close with Fargo, but to my mind the film falls short. The film has beautiful and powerful images of the landscape in winter; generally accurate (though exaggerated) renderings of regional mannerisms, attitudes, and accents; a taut contrast of domestic bliss and domestic nightmare in two of its storylines; strong performances by its actors; and a wealth of regionally specific details that are the product of the filmmakers’ origins in the region. And yet with all this, as I watched the film for the second time nine years after the first viewing, I’m left with a feeling of emptiness that is not aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps that is the Coens’ point, but it seems a meanspirited point to make, especially as it is made largely with the violent deaths of innocent people.
The film seems powerful but nearly heartless. As I watched it again, I often felt as if I was going through a masochistic ritual without being a masochist; there was no pleasure in the painful moments. Was it because I knew the characters’ fates? I can think of other violent films that hold up in multiple viewings. Is it because the characters in those films are fascinating? The main character of this film is not so much fascinating as repulsive. Jerry Lundegaard is inept, corrupt, and craven, and his family pays the price for his sins.
The film punctures the myths of Upper Midwestern virtue and politeness (”Minnesota Nice”) and Lake Wobegon’s homespun simplicity. This is a region that prides itself on higher than average rates of church attendance, voter turnout, corporate philanthropy, and high school graduation. It’s a place of reserved manners and clean government. It’s a place ripe for artistic deflation and undercutting.
Most of the main characters bear the kind of Scandinavian surnames that are common in the region: Jerry Lundegaard and his family undergo the film’s domestic nightmare as he arranges for his wife to be kidnapped; Wade Gustafson is the wealthy car dealer father in law; Marge Gunderson, the pregnant police officer, unravels the criminal schemes; Gaear Grimsrud is the most violent of the two low-life criminals. One exception to these Scandinavians is the Gustafson’s Jewish business partner, Stan Grossman.
Grimsrud’s name epitomizes the grim spirit of the film. Yet I would say the film goes even beyond grim. Relentlessly dispiriting would be a more accurate description.
The film attempts to use the happy domesticity of Marge Gunderson and her husband to counterbalance the downward spiral of violence and destruction in the Lundegaard-Gustafson and Showalter-Grimsrud storylines, but it doesn’t achieve this. The weight of the movie’s action and emotional impact is on the destruction of the Lundegaard domestic life, the victimization of the innocent Jean Lundegaard, and the murder of various other innocents by Showalter and Grimsrud.
Although this is not the great film of the Upper Midwest, it is nevertheless great in its depiction of winter. It uses the season and its scenery extremely well. Just think of some of the film’s images: Jerry’s car materializing out of the wintry weather at the beginning of the movie; shots of parking ramps and parking lots full of snow; Jerry manically scraping the ice off his windshield when he knows his scheme has failed; the endless snowy flatness of the land and the comic image of Carl Showalter planting his ice scraper as a marker for his loot.
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Was the film meant to lash back at the Minnesota culture the Coen brothers grew up in? They were born in the same town I was, St. Louis Park. The film reveals an intimate familiarity with the region, but it also seems to be the product of creators who feel outside that culture and perhaps even hostile toward it.
Why do I have such a negative reaction to the film this time around? Am I trying to preserve some mythic image of the region? Do I possess some regional sensibility that makes me resentful of it?
Next week: more on Fargo.