Last week I began a discussion of the 1996 Coen brothers’ film Fargo. This week I conclude my commentary on the film.
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The script of Fargo is especially adept at capturing aspects of regional speech. The characters utter their “yahs”; drop the g from “ing” endings; frequently say “you bet” and “you betcha”; and take on many other aspects of the dialect. The actors have clearly been coached in the regional accent, but the accents often seem overdone to my ear. Jean Lundegaard’s is probably the most exaggerated. Although I’ve heard very strong regional accents, especially in rural areas, I haven’t heard one quite like hers. The accent that seemed most authentic to me is heard from the man being interviewed in his driveway by one of Marge’s fellow police officers. He is the bartender near Moose Lake who talks about encountering Showalter (Steve Buscemi), providing the information that eventually leads Marge to the killers’ cabin.

The Coens subvert another Midwestern myth in the film when Grimsrud kills Showalter at the cabin. He does so in Paul Bunyan fashion–with an axe. The tool that cleared the Upper Midwestern frontier, a symbol of regional industriousness, becomes a murder weapon. Then, in the most (regrettably) unforgettable scene of the film, a modern woodsman’s tool, the wood chipper, is used to dispose of the body. As Marge Gunderson approaches Grimsrud with her pistol drawn, he is reddening the pure white snow of the northern woods.

As we watch the awful body-chipping scene, we do not know who is in the wood chipper. I assumed it was Jean Lundegaard, but we learn later it is Carl Showalter. If the clean snow of the winter woods can be said to symbolize the region’s own estimation of its moral purity, then the Coens leave no doubt about their own very different estimation of that purity. It does not exist, they tell us; the Upper Midwest is no different from any other region. It has violence and mayhem and stupidity, just like any other place.

Or are people stupider here, as the film perhaps implies? With the exception of the Marge Gunderson and Wade Gustafson, Fargo represents the locals as overly earnest, slow-witted yokels. Think of the two hookers and Marge’s police department colleagues.
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On the lighter side, at least two Coen brothers’ films mention gophers, the University of Minnesota mascot (the Golden Gophers) and source of one of the state’s nicknames (the Gopher State). In Fargo, Wade Gustafson, Jerry’s father-in-law, is watching a Gopher hockey game early in the film. In O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the main characters roast and eat gophers on a stick. This latter symbolism–could it have been unintentional?–was not lost on me, a U of M alumnus, though I have never heard anyone else mention it. The Coen brothers’ father, Ed Coen, was a professor in the highly respected economics department at the University of Minnesota. He once substitute taught in one of my economics classes.

Yes, I realize the gopher is an inherently funny mascot. Having a diminutive rodent for your mascot is funny. When you grow up here, though, you don’t think twice about it. And when you see pictures of Goldie the Gopher in his uniform and looking pretty athletic, he looks, well, almost fierce.
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In looking at the version of the screenplay that I found on the Internet, I noticed that it diverges from the movie slightly. For example, the script has an early scene in which Jerry checks into a hotel, but it’s not in the film. In another scene, the script has Wade Gustafson telling Jerry that he is watching the “Norstars” on television. In the film, however, it’s the Gophers, and they’re playing their archrivals, the Wisconsin Badgers.
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For a Fargo native’s view of the movie, see a Washington Post column by the talented James Lileks. For the most part, I agree with him.
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I have a few tangential connections to Fargo. I was in Minnesota the year that it was made (1995?) and tried to become an extra for the film. The casting call had asked that we come dressed in 1980s clothing, and they took pictures of the many people there. I must not have looked Midwestern enough, because I was not chosen.

The film has many fun local details, and I won’t attempt to go into them here. However, one in particular caught my attention. It was the name of the bar near Moose Lake in which, we are told, Carl Showalter asks the bartender where he can find some action. It’s called “Ecklund and Swedlin’s” (spelling taken from a screenplay found on the Internet). Ecklund and Swedlund are home builders in Minnesota. (Only in Minnesota or Sweden would you get a company name like that.) In fact, they built the Plymouth home that I spent most of my childhood years in.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 25th, 2005 at 9:46 am and is filed under Minnesota, Movies.