Fargo – Crime and Us
Jerry Lundegaard is a car salesman. He is conditioned to be polite with his customers and display a certain degree of benignity. His moments of desperation and anger are therefore spent in spontaneous outbursts guided through the smashing of inanimate objects around him for momentary relief, an action, which thanks to the nature of his profession he isn’t supposed to be doing in total public glare. He comes home to his wife armed with the same line almost every day, “Hon… Got the groceries”. He also comes home to a son with seemingly innocent queries up his sleeve, finding logical answers to which he has trouble.
The fact that Jerry has hatched the crime in question is just one part of him.
Carl and Grimsrud are two pathetic criminals. Carl is small-sized and funny looking, believes that second-hand smoking is carcinogenic and places sex over food. He can run into a display of fine tastes just so that he can make a conversation going with a woman. He knows Grimsrud is a dangerous guy, and hence always vents out his anger for his grim approach towards life with discretion and a reserved demeanor.
Grimsrud is hefty, unscrupulous and visceral. Likened by a teenager to “The Marlboro man”, he hardly talks, and when he does he seems to have only food or money on his mind.
We also know that one of the two isn’t circumcised.
The fact that Carl and Grimsrud have committed the crime in question is just one part of them.
Marge Gunderson is the chief of police at Brainerd. She is married and expecting. One of her foremost priorities while in a new city for investigation is to look for a decent place to eat. She has bouts of morning sickness and while on duty that pregnancy appendage does conflict with her work. She has a caring husband who gets up from his bed and makes her eggs while she has to report for duty at odd hours of the morning. Her accent’s cheerful and her observations acute.
The fact that Marge is solving the crime in question is just one part of hers.
The one thing that “Fargo” constantly seems to repeat in its head is the fact that crime is just a part of the lives of its desperate characters and not their life itself. So, even while it surrounds itself in a state of crime, it does not for once side-track the normal lives of those affected by it.
So, we see an unsure Jerry trying to pacify his son over the kidnapping of his wife, but all through his mumblings we know there is a guilt that shines beneath. In another shot we see an example of his mismanagement when he realizes that he has no secondary access to those he has asked to kidnap his wife.
We see a constantly blabbering Carl Showalter being reduced to a mere mortal while he watches his accomplice shoot down a police officer. His face freezes in fear at the sight of the execution and yet he manages to mutter, “Oh daddy”.
Marge is portrayed as lady who is far more smarter than her somewhat nerdy husband. But, she knows that after a day replete with dealing in pathetic criminals, he is her only hope for humanity.
Never once does “Fargo” impose upon itself this extra pressure to engage you. And yet, by the time it draws to a close you have probably felt for all its characters exactly what the director wants you to.
And that gradual osmosis is so, because never for once does “Fargo” forget that the crime it is dealing with would not have been possible if it wasn’t for the various characters that make it.
That self-realization is something that humanizes great crime movies and separates them from the rest.
The motive behind the crime or deducing the offenders seem too redundant an information when compared to exacting the true state of minds of the characters that have got attached to the crime.
Fargo literally puts to shame all of its peers that hinge on jaw-dropping events or thrilling sequences to hold your attention. It plays its cards early into its run and yet it plays the entire game with a diligence that’s hard to miss. It doesn’t expect you to find a missing link in an arcane picture. Instead, it just chooses to paint the picture with all its finer details and shades.
And by the time it retreats, it makes you shudder at the lack of humanity that presides over each and every one of us; those pathetic thoughts and quiet desire for survival that lead some people to commit one nefarious action after another.
In Marge’s closing lines it finds its true epicenter.
She has captured a criminal responsible for the murder of 5 and she speaks to him with an icy calm, that’s derived out of shock and grief.
“There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’t you know that? And here you are. And it’s a beautiful day.”
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wow !
A great analysis of a great film!
I guess this is what happens when somebody who didn’t grow up in the USA watches American movies. You have completely lost what the film is all about. When we teach Fargo in film school here, it is the movie poked fun at the most. It has the worst kind of midwest cliches. Joel asked his wife (McDormand) to poke fun at the Minnesota accents & she has done a fabulous job. I mean, nobody, but nobody, in the twin cities talks like that. When that Indian kicks the naked prostitute on her butt and sends her howling down the motel alley, or when he whips Showalter with a belt ( I mean, who does that@!! Whipping with a belt ? Are we in the dustbowl depression days or what ? ) or when Grimsrud uses the woodchipper to dispose off the body & looks foolish trying to jab the sock legs when the torso gets stuck, is all straight out of comic books and 60s TV serials where the same exact scenes were played out. That scene where Grimsrud stares at the cop & doesn’t know she is one despite her uniform so she has to literally point at the badge on her cap is classic bluecollar comedy. The criminals are so foolish they bury the loot under the snow with a stick hah! Entire film is just a mega satire, a parody, a riff, a homespun takeoff on a smalltown bumbling hick salesman, and you’ve analysed it like Fargo is some Godfather. That quote in the end “more to life than money” is not about being profound or calm or Marge’s being rooted in her rural paradise. It speaks to the hypocrisy of the people who live there, constantly dreaming of getting out of hicksville to make it big in Chicago but are too timid to take actual risks and end up mouthing sweet nonsense like money doesn’t matter. If you watched carefully, Marge’s concern is really about the non-promotion her husband got and his picture on a penny stamp – that whole stamp talk in the bedroom should have given away the picture but I guess you took that literally too. The genius of Fargo is in taking a completely horseshit nonsense premise and then executing it as though it actually happens in real life. This idea of car salesman getting his stupid wife kidnapped to rip off the inlaw is a very common midwest joke. I guess you have to live here to know that, but still I’m surprised nobody clued you in on that. That Jap guy who desperately wants to date Marge and makes up the cancer stricken dead wife story is another huge “Asian loser” cliche straight out of urban legends, again if you went to school in Kansas or Wisconsin you’ll hear it million times. Thing is, Fargo is as real as say Altman’s Short Cuts is real about LA. I mean, just like there are no wannabe women painters standing without panties arguing with their doctor husbands about unnatural color, and the woman says what do you mean there is no such thing as unnatural color & the doctor goes , but honey you’re not wearing panties! and the camera bares it all – its a cliche, a joke, we’re making fun at the LA elites, its not real. In fact, interesting litcrit exercise would be to constrast Shortcuts with Fargo. See, in Shortcuts, you are poking fun at every single LA cliche – the helicopter bugspray, the earthquake as a rescue mechanism for girl getting raped, philandering wife ( again played to perfection by Joel’s wife McDormand) and 100 other LA cliches. Fargo is what we formally refer to as a switch on Shortcuts. A switch is a very common literary device – like if you want to do a switch on Sholay, you would make Gabbar into a woman & make village of Ramgarh into a city and instead of chopping off the hands you would give a prostetic leg to Takur and make Holi into Valentine Day & so on – that’s what Fargo is all about, take Shortcuts & instead of making fun of LA’s artsy fartsy crowd, make fun on the midwest’s nincompoops who can’t even plan a simple kidnap of their own wife for Christ’s sake.
Do you get it now ?
Oh well..a brilliant analysis of one of my favourite films..or so i thought till i read comment#3..wonder if John Laxmi’s comments are true or a joke..nevertheless..a well written article..
“you
vinayak
the last two lines of yours has given it away. you don’t even have the integrity to accept that john laxmi has shaken you. you try to laugh it away [-x >:p :-l
John
Do I get it now?
Maybe I dont. Because, ur reasons for not liking the movie are reasons that I did not even put into perspective for liking the movie.
The slightest of regional reference that I have resorted to in my review is that Marge’s accents seems cheerful. I guess that shud have explained to u, how little I know of the various regional elements u have brought abt in your rant.
Do I get it now?
I dont. I really dont. Cos like the first line in your comment rightly conveys, its a seeming deficiency that every person who has not grown up in America wud suffer from while wataching American movies, owing to not knowing those cultural tidbits that a movie sets itself in..
And yet I feel blessed abt the fact that I donno those crevices that u have visited while analysing the movie. Cos maybe if I did know abt them I would have knowingly or unnknowingly bypassed all those great attributes that I as a neutral viewer was able to unearth whilst enjoying the movie on a more universal level..
Do I get it now?
Oh No….I dont.. I dont even get a lot of those “tapri jokes” that people arnd me crack with some regularity.
And yet for the ones I know, I do cast a compassionate eye that helps me bypass the authenticity of it, while watching a movie if it manages to engage me outside of it.
Do I get it now?
Maybe I dont. Because, like that last query in your comment, the entire ramble that u have brought in here, to me seemed like an effort at imposing a certain psychological leverage. A certain limping pedagogic eruption thats unwarranted because its so out of place.
Shreehari!
Really nice analysis and comment.
@ John
I suppose analysing movie is very personal thing. It has global language and you can’t say just because using regional clich
Sorry Sreehari, failure in communication, entirely mine. Mera matlab kuch aur tha, tumne kuch aur hi nikaal liya.
32,
Thanks for “vouching”….
John,
Oh c’mmon.. Not a problem yaar
I am not here to foster social contacts anyway…Its cinema that has brought us all together over here and all agreements and disagreements ought to discover its conclusion in cinema
John
Very interesting observations.
How do you know that Doctors in LA do not have wives who paint with no panties?
@Mainak
LOL
@John
of the multitudes of reviews and analysis I”ve read on Fargo (a practice I tend to undertake AFTER viewing a film I’ve really liked)can’t recall if any of them reflected on your pointers. Perhaps I’ve been reading articles authored by Indians. Just kidding.
Though I did find your insight, well insightful, but you really can’t blame the rest of the world to not read into the deep rooted nitty gritties of an alien culture which seem to distant and unaccessible. Yes, for a change you guys are the ‘aliens’ here. HAHA. (New Immigrants are termed as Aliens in the US)