Fargo

June is going to be one heck of a month because I’m dedicating this month to two director brothers and some of their most famous work. I’m of course referring to Joel and Ethan Coen, the Coen brothers. Let’s kick this month off with the 1996 classic, “Fargo,” which happens to be my 700th review since I started blogging.

“Fargo” starts with a completely spot-on look of smalltown life in the cold winter landscape of Minnesota and North Dakota.

Roger Ebert mentioned, “Then it rotates its story through satire, comedy, suspense and violence, until it emerges as one of the best films I've ever seen.”

Ebert continued, “To watch it is to experience steadily mounting delight, as you realize the filmmakers have taken enormous risks, gotten away with them and made a movie that is completely original, and as familiar as an old shoe - or a rubbersoled hunting boot from Land's End, more likely.”

The film is “based on a true story” that took place in Minnesota in 1987. It has been filmed at the spot, there and in North Dakota, by the Coen brothers, who grew up in St. Louis Park, a suburb of Minneapolis, and went on to make good movies like “Blood Simple,” “Miller’s Crossing” and “Barton Fink,” but never before a film as wonderful as “Fargo,” shot in their own hometown.

To tell the story it to give away spoilers, so I will do my best not to do that. A car salesman named Jerry Lundegaard, played by William H. Macy, desperately needs money for a business deal – a parking lot plan that can save him from bankruptcy. He is under fire of his rich father-in-law, played by Harve Presnell, who owns the car agency and treats him like dirt. Jerry hires a couple of lean criminals named Showalter and Grimsrud (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife (Kristin Rudrud) and promises to split an $80,000 payment with them. Easy enough, except that everything goes wrong in completely unplanned ways, as the plot twists and turns and makes a joke of everything Jerry can think best of.

Ebert described, “Showalter is nervous, sweaty, talkative, mousy. Grimsrud is a sullen slug of few words.” During the kidnapping, he suddenly kills some people (“Oh daddy!” says Showalter, scared).

The bodies are found the next morning, frozen beside the highway, in the bleak lands between Minneapolis and Brainerd, Minn., which is, as we are reminded every time we see the giant statue outside town, the home of Paul Bunyan.

Brainerd’s police chief is a pregnant woman named Marge Gunderson, played by the great Frances McDormand. Ebert noted, “She talks like one of the MacKenzie brothers, in a Canadian-American-Scandivanian accent that's strong on cheerful folksiness. Everybody in the movie talks like that, with lines like “you're dern tootin'.”” When she gets to the big city, she starts looking for a place with a good buffet.

Marge Gunderson might need some help to get her patrol car started in the morning, but she is a talented officer. Soon after visiting the murder place, she pieces the crime in the right way. Eyewitnesses put two suspects in a tan Ciera. This brings her to Jerry Lundegaard’s shop. “I’m a police officer from up Brainerd,” she tells him, “investigating some malfeasance.” Jerry, smartly played by Macy, is a man with a lot of mysterious complexities of the trouble he has put himself in. He is so weak at crime that, when the kidnapping becomes unneeded, he can’t tell the kidnappers, because he doesn’t know their phone number. He’s being hammered with constant calls from General Motors, curious about the unreadable serial number on the paperwork for the same missing tan Ciera. He tries sending faxes where the number is dirty. GM isn’t fooled. Macy creates the painful agony of a man who needs to think fast, and whose mind is filled with fear, guild and the crazy thought that he can somehow still do this successfully.

Ebert credited, “Macy, who has played salesmen and con men before (he's a veteran of David Mamet's plays), finds just the right note in his scenes in the auto showroom. It's fascinating to watch him in action, trying to worm out of a lie involving an extra charge for rust-proofing.”

“Fargo” is filled with so many similar moments that make us nod with recognition. When the two low-paying criminals stop for the night at a truck stop, they hire prostitutes. First is them performing bored, mercenary love making and the next with them sitting up in bed, watching “The Tonight Show” on TV.

Small parts look bigger because they’re so well written and looked at. Kristin Rudrud has a few scenes as Jerry’s wife, but makes a character out of them, always chopping or cooking something heatedly in the kitchen. Their teenage son, played by Tony Denman, who excuses himself from the table to go to McDonald’s, helps makes the film’s setting with a bedroom that has a poster on its wall for the Accordion King.

Ebert credited, “Marge, discussing a hypothetical killer who has littered the highway with bodies, observes matter of factly, “I doubt he's from Brainerd.”” Harve Presnell is a typical self-made millionaire in his firmness on giving the release money himself: He earned it, and by goodness, if anyone is going to deliver it, it’ll be him. He wants his money’s worth.

On the way to the violent and unexpected climax, Marge has a drink in her hotel buffet with an old high school love who obviously still loves her (Steve Park), even though she’s married (John Carroll Lynch) and pregnant. He explains, in a sentence filled with the vagueness of the possibly trimmed, “I’m working for Honeywell. If you’re an engineer, you could do a lot worse.” Frances McDormand must have nominated for an Academy Award with the performance, which is true in every little moment, and yet mysteriously, quietly, over the top in its increasing effect. Ebert ended his review by saying, “The screenplay is by Ethan and Joel Coen (Joel directed, Ethan produced), and although I have no doubt that events something like this really did take place in Minnesota in 1987, they have elevated reality into a human comedy - into the kind of movie that makes us hug ourselves with the way it pulls off one improbable scene after another. Films like “Fargo” are why I love the movies.”

Don’t read this review if you haven’t seen the movie. You will love this movie, as it is an absolute must. I would say it’s one of my favorites. Especially since Marge’s most quotable line in the movie is the most famous quotes ever said, “You betcha.”

Check in next week for an even better film in “The Coen Brothers Month.”