Regardless of what the jury decides, the Coen brothers' homespun murder story Fargo is among the best films released in the US so far this year. What's more, the film looks set to remain in the vanguard throughout the remaining eight months of 1996, when, hopefully, members of the Academy will not only remember the work of the Coens but also Frances McDormand's performance as Marge Gunderson.
McDormand's portrayal of the very-pregnant local police chief is not only her most memorable to date but one of the keys to Fargo's success. She last came to the Academy's attention for her performance in Mississippi Burning. And in Cannes, she also pops up in Directors' Fortnight entry Lone Star by John Sayles.
Fargo's reception at the US box-office where, after a two-month run, it has taken over US$20 million as of last weekend, is proof of its popularity with the cinema-going public, but its critical reviews amount to paeans of praise. Critic Gene Siskel has called Fargo a masterpiece, and warned that "there won't be a better film than this all year." His colleague Roger Ebert was equally enthusiastic and wrote in The Chicago Sun-Times: "Fargo is one of the best movies I've ever seen… Films like this are why I love movies."
Fargo, which marks a return to their roots and to peak form for Joel and Ethan Coen after the somewhat over-produced The Hudsucker Proxy, is a reality-based crime drama set in Minnesota in 1987. Jerry Lundegard (William Macy) is a car salesman in Minneapolis who has got himself into debt and is so desperate for money that he hires two thugs (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stromare) to kidnap his own wife. Lundegard plans to collect the ransom from her wealthy father (Harve Presnell), paying the thugs a pittance and keeping the rest to pay off his debts. The scheme backfires when the thugs shoot a state trooper and two innocent bystanders in rural Minnesota, drawing local Police Chief Gunderson (McDormand) into her first homicide investigation. The ensuing action as the body count rises is both poignant and, at times, hilariously funny.
"Everything we have done before," says director Joel Coen, who was named Best Director at the festival for Barton Fink in 1991, "has been entirely fictional… stories that we've made up, plots and characters that were self-consciously artificial".
"Fargo, on the other hand, was a conscious effort to explore the spectrum of a series of non-fictional events with characters that existed in some form, in an approach and a style that reflects reality," the director continues. "Although this is a character-driven piece, we never met these people personally and we certainly were not privy to conversations that took place between them. Yet in examining the facts of the case, and with our understanding of the behaviour of Midwesterners, we were able to speculate about the individual motivations, intentions, actions and reactions of characters that were intriguing to us and who held a certain resonance for us."
Producer Ethan Coen, who picked up the 1991 Palme d'Or for Barton Fink, elaborates: "In discovering the facts of this case, the characters of Jerry and Marge were the ones that intrigued us most. They both sounded like very ordinary people with ordinary sensibilities who became involved in a scenario that was anything but ordinary. It's a classic case of good versus evil and the ensuing conflict between the two. What makes it so much fun to watch is that you'd never expect either of these people to be involved in such an out-of-control situation."
"The writing [a Coen brothers' script] is brilliant, and Joel and Ethan are blessed with such a masterful creative eye," says William Macy. "To me, Fargo is a perfect example of the dictionary definition of 'grotesque' - it's beautiful and hideous at the same time. The thing I loved most about my character is that he never gives up. He sets the plan, he is sure it will work and, despite all information to the contrary, he never deviates from it. Up to the very last scene in the movie, he's still fighting to make it work.
You've just gotta love somebody that has this kind of faith. On the other hand, he's as dumb as a bag of rocks and I liked that, too."
McDormand, who is Joel Coen's wife, plays the other pivotal role. "It's the first time in 12 years of sleeping with the director that I got the job, no questions asked," jokes McDormand, who was born and raised in Illinois. "The essence of Marge is the epitome of a small-town girl raised in the Corn Belt of the United States. There's something about rural mid-America that resists the temptation of self-analysis. Marge is representative of those Midwesterners who accept their lives at face value.
"The film is an affectionate, sometime hyper-realistic, oftentimes humorously-dark comment on everything Joel and Ethan experienced growing up there. They've painted a beautifully bland, white landscape with a thin grey horizon splattered with human blood," she says.
Christopher Pickard
Prod Co: Working Title
Prod: Ethan Coen
Dir: Joel Coen
Scr: Ethan Coen and Joel Coen
Ph: Roger Deakins
Art Dir: Thomas Wilkins
Prod Des: Rick Heinrichs
Cos: Mary Zophres
Mus: Carter Burwell
Ed: Roderick Jaynes
Cast: Frances McDormand, William Macy, Steve Buscemi, Harve Presnell, Peter Stormare.
Running time: 95mins
International Sales: PolyGram
