Fargo - Overrated?

Overrated is correct.

Yeah, I never found the love of this movie. There are tons of Coen Brothers movies I'd put miles ahead of this. Everyone always points out, "Their accents are funny!" or "They're timid characters in a ridiculous situation!" or something. I think the movie is charming and has a few laughs and some good characters... but it is far from deserving the attention it got. That attention should have gone to Miller's Crossing.

i did, i think its freakin excellent. and i saw it without knowing about its hype.

I watched this just last weekend. It's certainly not a flawed movie in any way, even though my urge to slap William Macy silly every time I see him act made me wary. Is it right to say it excels in its minimalism? Only the Coens could make a car approaching the camera through a snowstorm funny.

But it's not their best work. I'd put it closer to the bottom than the top, only because most of their other films are so much better. I'm a bigger fan of The Hudsucker (long live the Hud!) Proxy's cartoonishness.

I used to think so but I watched it again recently and found it was better than I thought, I didn't think it deserved the oscars it got, Coens have directed films that deserved more attention than this film.

I agree that they heaped praise on the wrong film, it should've gone to Millers Crossing but that's the oscars for you, always giving the right attention for the wrong film.

I was also seriously underwhelmed when I first saw it, but this is one of those films like Big Lebowski that grows on you. I find Fargo funnier everytime I see it now, especially Macy's character (genius acting).
Also, I like it because it is one of the very few American films in which the celebration of "normal folks", of the simple family life of Marge and her husband, is convincing and not corny. It is a very moral film that actually works, and that's rare enough to be noticed. Also, the accents are very funny.

I agree it's a bit overrated in that it isn't the Coens' best film, and they should have got Oscars for all their films before Fargo; but by itself this is a great, original film.

It is the polar opposite of The Hudsucker Proxy.

No, wait, then Man Who Wasn't There may the polar opposite...I actually finished Fargo, despite being bored to tears.

It may not be as flamboyant as most other Coen Bros. films, but it's a perfect little movie. The performances are all spot on, the characters are interesting, the plot is intriguing, the pacing is just right.
The rarest of films is one that completely succeeds at what it sets out to do. Fargo is one of those films, and that is pretty damned special.

Your lucky. I saw the movie in a theatre with all the hype still fresh and at the end of it I sat there and thought "What the fuck? Best movie of the year? You are fucking retarded, Gene Siskel." It's not a bad movie by any means, just tremondously overhyped by a sellect few that created a reputation it can't live up to. I've long believed one of the reasons Fargo became so beloved by Hollywood and certain critics was it's none too subtle mockery of midwesterners.

Yes, it's overrated. It's not their worst film, but I can easily think of five of theirs that are more special to me. I agree with El Topo, though, it gets funnier the more I watch it.
Frances McDormand: she's a super lady.

I agree. I thought the contrasts were really what made this is go into great movie territory. On one hand we had the ultimatly fumbling but still savage violence of the kidnappers and the self-serving, self-pity greed of Macy. On the other hand we had Frances McDormand creation of a very unique caring, supportive but still quite capable character. One of McDormand's last lines really summed this up. I believe it was "It's a beautiful day and here you are."

Not overrated in any way. Fargo is, in fact, a perfect, flawless film. It's certainly dryer than other Coen films, and I can see where that might put off the hardcore Coen fans (in the same way that Spike Lee's Clockers puts me off, as it seems less like a Spike Lee film, but by people who aren't as enthusiastic about Lee it is considered to be one of his best films), but judged on its own merits, I just think everything about this movie is fantastic: the story, the characters, Macy (his definitive role), McDormand (probably her best role), Buscemi and Stormare, the score, the photography (best snow since Dr. Zhivago! Maybe even better!), the opening shot of the Bronco emerging from the snow storm, Presnell, Buscemi trying to mark the buried briefcase in miles of identical snowdrift with a tiny windshield scraper, Macy going to "check with the boss"...

Macy's shriek as the cops get him in the motel is priceless.

Nah, it's not overrated.

Not overrated at all, it's a great film.

Fargo is a fantastic film. The brothers capture the oddness of ND and MN very well. The beauty of the film is in the presentation of the freak nature that can be found anywhere in the US. Miller's Crossing is very good but my all time favorite is Blood Simple. I saw that on a dusty hot Montana night in August...one of my best movie experiences ever.

Shakespeare in Love was very well done, however I think Fargo will be remembered long after SiL has faded from film memory.

Not overrated for me. I think it's excellent. It's not the best or most daring Coen film, but it's such an enjoyable movie to watch. The preformances are spot-on and the writing it top-notch as usual for the Coens.

I think of Fargo as a introductory film for those not aquainted with black comedy or indie films; it's a fairly main-stream-indie pic, but I still love it to death.

I think "Lebowski" is miles ahead of "Fargo." Face it, the brothers know a lot more about LA than they ever will about Minnesota. The accents were completely silly, and the "normal lives" supposedly shown in the movie were absurd. I'm not sure why it's seen as a black comedy, unless the comedy comes from laughing at the fictional "hicks" in the film.

No, most definately not overrated...until it becomes trendy to say so of course, then the same old boring backlash will happen.

Joel and Ethan Coen are from Minnesota, not L.A. The "silly" accents give this film its sense of place perhaps better than any amount of snow or open highway could. In areas of Minnesota, this Scandanavian/Norwegian accent is prevalent, and nearly segregated to a specific area. In Fargo, ND. you wouldn't find anyone with this accent unless they're a migrated there from nothern Minnesota. So as silly as these accents sound, they are a truthful depiction of the surroundings, and this also plays heavily (I think) on the opening where we're informed of it being a "true story."


Part of Fargo's comedy stems from Macy jumping through all these hurdles over a parking lot. Yes, a fucking parking lot! It's as funny as seeing Jeff Bridges smash up some poor guys sports car because he thought it was a kid's. Fargo is comedic in a way that doesn't make me laugh out loud, but rather makes me sit back, watch, breath, and most of all listen to what these people have to say. Big Lebowski is a great film, but it's a more ribald and irreverant adventure and it doesn't have the nastiness of Fargo. And I appreciate nastiness; there's something to be said about a severed leg jollily bouncing in and out of woodchipper.

On a side note, does anyone remember seeing Fargo on VHS at Borders in a two-pack that featured a snow dome (about the size of a child's fist) which had the woodchipper and severed leg inside? What a cool item, and best of all, the snow was both white and red. I've looked for one on Ebay sporadically and have come up with nothing; Borders had a similar set-up with Being John Malkovich which came with wooden eggs.

Not to nitpick, but that was John Goodman's Walter that smashed the car, not The Dude. Smashing a car would be very un-Dude.

eitherway i could give a shit whether the accents are accurate, after years of people thinking all australians live in the outback and hunt crocodiles, i couldnt give a shit whether they changed the minnesotan accent slightly.

It's not just the accents, it's things like Stormare jamming his hat on his head as he runs out of the shack to chase after Buscemi with an axe. Therein lies Fargo's brilliance.

I was finally able to watch this film on its own merits.  I still would rank many of their films ahead of it on a personal list, but I finally shed all the baggage I had with regard to how much the deck is stacked against the characters, and just enjoyed the bitter little slice of life it is.  I always found the movie funny, but it seems to get funnier with repeated viewings.  I was doubled over for close to a minute just based on Macy's delivery of "watch that language there!"  The Coens mine so much comedy out of the idea that even in criminal, violent circumstances people are often unable to shake that illusion of politeness and civility.

 

One thing I am always intrigued by is the Mike Yanagita scene.  First of all, it's a masterfully done bit of work that could almost function as its own short film.  The tonal balance they pull off is incredible.    Second, I can't think but help that the scene holds some kind of key to the whole piece, but I can't quite put my finger on what.  I noticed that right before Marge leaves for Minneapolis, we hear the quote about "casting off the larval envelope."

On top of the praise already slung at this, I think Fargo is one of the Coen Brother's movies that has remarkably realistic characters.  Other than, maybe, Burn After Reading, every character in this movie has actual counterparts in reality.  Fargo, to me, perfectly illustrates how weird, stupid or idiosyncratic human beings can be.  It's hilarious and humiliating all at once.

 

And I always like to believe that Fargo implies this kind of shit happens more often than you'd think. 

The bulk of this zombie thread is a horribly degenerative, wasting disease, likely brought on by the aggressive agent of infection, "overrated".  Fargo is amazing; directed and photographed within an inch of its life, and boasting some of the finest performances in the careers of anyone you choose to name from the cast.

 

 

The character of Jerry Lundegaard is a fantastically original creation. He's as much of a sociopath as Gaear Grimsrud w/out ever having to personally kill someone.  

 

Fargo is great.

Quote:

I thought the key to that scene was the phone call afterward, when Marge's friend tells her over the phone that Mike is, in fact, married. His deception motivates Marge to go back and interview one final time, just in case. EDIT: Fun fact - The actor that plays Mike Yanagita also plays the dad of the Korean student in A Serious Man ("accept the mystery").

 

Fargo is perfect.

I appreciate its function within the story.  I guess I was talking about in a more symbolic sense.  The Coens always have a way of making it feel like there are intrigues and mysteries flowing underneath the surfaces of their movies.  

Fargo is great.

 

However.

 

I can see where someone coming to it belatedly may be led to expect something MASSIVELY AWESOME given the reaction to it when it was released.

 

Previously they'd made five films. All were seen, to greater or lesser extent based on the critic, as clever exercises in style. Even Miller's Crossing — which is also great — had show-stopping sequences that, if you weren't in the Coens camp, could strike you as being "Look at us stop everything for this epic 'Danny Boy' machine-gun scene. AREN'T WE AWESOME. LOOK AT OUR AWESOME COMMAND OF CINEMA." I don't agree — huge Coens fan here — but at the time, some critics had grown to dread the latest airless wink-wink film-snob exercise from the smart boys.

 

Fargo was different. It was seen as the Coens, for the first time, Growing Up and Telling a Story. There really aren't any Epic Sequences in it. So a lot of the Coens' detractors were pleasantly surprised. Also it was their first to win some Oscars. Also it came after Hudsucker Proxy, which a lot of people hated.

 

It was, stylistically, the least Coens-y film up to that point. Someone coming to it outside the context of 1996 might indeed wonder what all the fuss was.

 

I see that this thread began in 2004, but if someone saw No Country for Old Men and then Fargo for the first time...well, they're both great but No Country may have the edge. It's apples and oranges, of course, but some may prefer No Country. Or even True Grit. Anyway, I think it would please the Coens to know that some people prefer one or two of their later films to a film they made 16 years ago. Otherwise it'd be like "Sorry, dudes, you peaked with Fargo."

 

Just trying to put Fargo's rep in retrospective perspective. At the time it was only their sixth film and they were only a decade into their careers. Now they're working on their sixteenth and they're past 25 years. We are all old.

"On a side note, does anyone remember seeing Fargo on VHS at Borders in a two-pack that featured a snow dome (about the size of a child's fist) which had the woodchipper and severed leg inside? What a cool item, and best of all, the snow was both white and red. I've looked for one on Ebay sporadically and have come up with nothing; Borders had a similar set-up with Being John Malkovich which came with wooden eggs."

 

 

 

 

eBay currently lists 11 Fargo snow globes, for around 25$. The Malchovich swag were nesting dolls.

I have both snow globes around here somewhere. The woodchipper one and the iconic Marge-inspects-the-body one.

 

To re-use a phrase I used awhile back, my initial problem with Fargo was that it felt like "shooting Willy Lomans in a barrel."  The movie was so relentlessly misanthropic, and Jerry so irredeemably awful a person, that I resisted it.  But what became clear when I watched it the other day was that the way the Coens used the Midwestern speech patterns not just as a punchline, but as a way of commenting on the illusion of civility.  Not that I didn't recognize that before on some level, but watching it this time, it really clicked for me.  Maybe because I had just been reading more about the Trayvon Martin case, and the racist reactions, and I was at a particularly bitter place to receive the message.  Just because Jerry is a sad-sack Willy Loman type doesn't mean he has to be a well-rounded character.  That's just not who he is.  Jerry is an awful, awful man.  But there is such subtlety in Macy's "polite" delivery, and it took me multiple viewings to really appreciate it... this time I really bought into the idea that it wasn't that the Coens wrote Lundegaard as too one-note, but that "Jerry" was someone who was entirely made up of these folksy mannerisms; that the real man's true nature was buried deep underneath them... and that in different circumstances it may never have even been revealed. (Like the money under the snow?)

Fargo can ONLY even be REMOTELY argued to be "overrated" within the strict confines of the absurdly spectacular pantheon of the Coen's other films. Next to Barton Fink*, Blood Simple, and Miller's Crossing in particular, I might actually agree with the assessment that, as stupendous an achievement as it is, Fargo is certainly not at all their best film for my personal money. Which says a metric fuckton about how stratospherically, astronomically high the bar is on the Coen's filmography.

 

When taken OUTSIDE the Coen's pantheon however? Its an out and out work of no-bullshit greatness, just like 98% of the rest of their films unequivocally are. If you're saying its overrated within the confines of their superhumanly elite filmography, I might well be very much inclined to agree (pretty sure I may have even said as much myself I think as a kid back in the day when it was still a new release now that I think back on it: I know it was five years later, but even so I was STILL busy coming down off the high of the pair of sucker punches to each individual testicle that was Miller's and Fink respectively at the time, such was the raw power that those films had; and even Hudsucker Proxy which I had a small obsession with back then).

 

If you're going to argue that Fargo is an overrated film PERIOD however, then no, it very much isn't at all, to a point where I'm almost tempted to say that you're objectively wrong (the performances across the board ALONE are proof positive enough, to say nothing of the film's incredible narrative structure and the insanely unique and memorable, off-kilter characterizations), fuck you and thanks for playing. I may not have the near-religious worship of Fargo that I may have of Fink or Miller's, but I still dearly love the film deeply like its one of my own children and it leaves my film collection over my dead fucking body.

 

And even still, saying that this film is overrated in comparison to other Coen works is kinda like saying that a good titty-fuck is overrated in comparison to a perfect fellating. Assuming you're a sexually healthy hetero male here obviously, you're simply NOT turning down the prospect of EITHER one at the end of the day. Engaging in such a discussion as this, we're entering a realm of SUCH petty hair splitting to SUCH a tremendously ludicrous degree regarding semantics between two things that are all SO utterly phenomenal either way, that it's the epitome of an exercise in intellectually narcissistic, self-indulgent pointlessness. It's like saying "I think Psycho is overrated in comparison to Vertigo" or vice versa. Those are BOTH such obscenely sublime, perfect films that its precisely that sort of overzealous, hyperbolic, contrarian-for-the-sake-of-it nitpicking that gives many cinephiles a reputation among "normal folks" as being a bunch of tight-assed, elitist snobs.

 

I know we're all a bunch of huge, colossal nerds for this stuff, but perspective is all I'm saying here folks.

 

*Barton Fink for the record has always had my vote for my undisputed favorite of theirs. Saw it in theaters as a small kid and it's part of a very special group of films to me that had an absolutely profound impact and effect on my life and on my views of art in general. Movie is an inarguable masterwork so far as I'm concerned.

 

 

About the Mike Yanagita scene, I'd say it just reinforces what we've been seeing from Jerry: that beneath the well dressed, clean-cut, smiling exteriors of these middle-class family men and hometown pals, there's some very dark, very unpleasant stuff waiting to come out, be it having your wife kidnapped for the ransom money or stalking and lying to women in hopes of getting in their big, pregnant pants. I think that's supported by the fact that her run-in with Mike is what makes Marge give Jerry a second look. (She's just good po-lice, that one.)

 

About Jerry being "irredeemably awful," I don't know, I just don't see it. There's something sadly sympathetic about a guy who tries to make some meager accomplishment in his life, fails, and just keeps digging himself deeper and deeper with every attempt to dig himself out. Though he makes a lot of terrible decisions and is indeed a bad man in a lot of respects, I just can't help but feel something for him and his situation. When he finally gets pulled out of that motel room in his underpants, literally kicking and screaming, it doesn't feel like a villain getting his final comeuppance, but rather the sad conclusion to his pathetic little tragedy.

 

To answer the thread's initial question, no, until people start saying it cures cancer I couldn't conceivably use to the word "overrated" to describe Fargo.

 

 

I mostly agree with this assessment (particularly regarding his difficult to watch arrest sequence) but I would like to point out that perhaps the most morally damning aspect to Lundegaard's character is that he genuinely didn't even think for a moment of the emotional or psychological effect that his wife's kidnapping would have on their still very young son until he was finally confronted with the mortifying sight of his little boy alone in his room crying his eyes out with worry and frightened terror that he'll never see his mom again. Just then there's this look of IMMENSE fucking horror that registers on Jerry's face that tells you he didn't even for ONE SECOND consider their son in all his schemes until the very moment where he's punched full in the face by one of the single worst consequences of them (so far as his family is concerned at least). 

 

Its very difficult to say whether that's a statement on his ultimate immorality or just the sheer, staggering degrees of his thoughtless incompetence. Perhaps a bit of both really. And either way its one of my favorite beats in the film and further evidence of what a phenomenal piece of work the whole thing is.

Being pathetic is no excuse for evil. 

 

Jerry's pathetically evil.

 

 

I think its more a case where he's SO stupid and doesn't think things through that it gets to a point where his stupidity becomes its own kind of callousness, which then makes his actions that eventually comes from this thoughtlessness ultimately horrible and evil. Its not that he's outright INTENDING to be evil... he's just THAT fucking dim and unintelligent to a point where he doesn't for one second consider the consequences of anything that isn't but five microseconds in front of his face.

 

I think he really is THAT stupid that from his perspective he'd just make a boatload of money and the worst that would come of it would be giving his wife the most mortifying scare of her life (and as I said, he's so thoughtless of his actions that he doesn't even factor their son into the equation until the moment where he's FORCED to see it by the actual firsthand sight of his son in front of him sobbing for his mom), but that in the end she'd come home safely, his family would then become rich and well provided for, and that nobody would get seriously hurt in the end.

 

I think that he TRULY believed that THAT'S how a plan like his would go down and that it's meant to illustrate his being such a complete fucking naive, gullible moron... but a moron to a point where it has catastrophic (and fatal) consequences on others, which in the end, no matter his reasons or intentions, is still evil brought on to others by ultimately him and his ineptness in the end.

 

I think the point here is that it's more an evil birthed from his being so dumb than it is from outright maliciousness. But as you said, it is still a kind of evil all the same, and it points to the extreme importance of thinking all your actions through and looking at the consequences they have on other people besides yourself and beyond the immediacy of the present situation. The lack of any real malice on his end (in stark contrast to say... Stormare's Grimsrud, who is a much more "traditional" kind of evil monster) might make him come across as somewhat more sympathetic to some... but I ultimately agree that no matter the reasons, bad is still bad and he does ultimately deserve what he gets in the end.

 

I guess I'm somewhat more in the middle of the two viewpoints on the character (leaning more towards your end of course Rain Dog, but I still sorta see where Cosby's coming from kinda). I consider Jerry, like every other character in the film, to be extremely well conceived, written, and acted by Macy, as evidenced by the fact that we can even HAVE this debate on the nature of the character's actions and motives at all.

 

Hence my verdict of: hell the fuck NO not overrated.

Edited by Jaquio - 4/19/12 at 8:39pm

 

 

Initially I thought Jerry was supposed to be a Willy Loman type.  In the Miller play, although Willy is a bad father, although he has cheated on his wife, there is still a grand American tragedy playing out. But if that's how the Coens intended to write Jerry, then they kinda failed-- because all the things that make him sympathetic are completely superficial, and he brings the whole mess on himself.  Yes, Wade is a fucking asshole who treats Jerry like shit.  But Jerry has a decent job (one where he routinely fucks his customers over to make a few extra bucks), and a family that loves him.  Wade's not keeping Jerry from making ends meet.  I don't think Jerry's plight is a commentary on the failure of the American Dream, or something.  The only tragedy in Fargo is in humanity's capacity to parlay a mess into a fucking mess, and that's entirely due to Jerry being selfish and greedy.  None of it had to happen.  He wasn't Walter White dealing with a grim diagnosis and fucked up health care system, or something.

 

To me, the movie is much better if I view Jerry as a man who is irredeemable.  If I view the things that make him seem sympathetic as just the social masks that he is too cowardly to shed, which actually serve to underline and mock his evil, rather than make us feel sorry for him.

 

As for the Mike Yanagita scene, again, I appreciate and agree with that assessment.  I'm just saying it seemed there was something more to it beyond its function within the story.  An extra layer of mystery that I could not work out.  Either way, it's masterfully done.

 

 

This is also a great point; Jerry's family was indeed doing just fine on their own and on both his salary and Wade's own money no doubt. Besides greed, I also think that some of Jerry's motivation was obviously to fuck over Wade and get even with him for always belittling him. Perhaps he also felt undermined and emasculated by the fact that Wade was probably doing more to support Jean financially than Jerry himself was able to. Which again, are all petty, self-serving, and self-absorbed motivations that further illustrate Jerry as such a pathetic little shit.

 

But again, I think that in the end its specifically his own damned stupidity and unwillingness to think out the full effects of his actions before he takes them that are the real source of all the misery he ultimately brings to others. He's not out to SPECIFICALLY HARM others for the sake of it: he's petty, small minded, and does something so recklessly stupid that it gets a bunch of people (most of them completely innocent, including his own damned wife and the mother of his child) senselessly killed for no good reason... but again, that wasn't his specific intent. He's not an ice cold psychopath like Grimsrud. Which again is HARDLY intended as any kind of defense for the character at all. Evil comes in many different varieties and forms. Jerry Lundegaard's is more the George W. Bush variety rather than the Dick Cheney type.

 

But I agree that among my favorite aspects of Fargo is that the ultimate tragedy is the complete POINTLESSNESS of all the killings, that NONE of it NEEDED to happen at all were Jerry not such an unthinking douche. Marge herself lays it all out as much (to Grimsrud of all people) with her whole "And for what? All for a little bit of money." speech at the end.

 

Also nobody mentioned I don't think one of my favorite scenes in the film, which is Shep yanking the hooker off of Carl's dick in mid-fuck before strangling and whipping the shit out of him with his belt like an abusive dad. No particular reason other than its probably the most straight up, belly-laugh hilarious scene in an otherwise fairly dark and unflinchingly messed up film and of course (as is completely par for the Coens) its all very well shot and edited to perfection as much as the rest of the film is. The hooker's "dirty talk" just before it happens absolutely kills me every time.

Edited by Jaquio - 4/19/12 at 10:32pm

Interesting defense of Jerry in this thread. Personally, he scared me a lot more than even Buscemi and Stormare. For all his energy, there was something dead about him. Unbelievable performance from Macy. 

I don't really think ignorance or stupidity is an excuse for Jerry.  Is not giving a shit if you hurt someone to get what you want really any better than actively enjoying hurting them?  The film has some fun at Jerry's ineptitude, but he's not retarded.  He's not incapable of knowing the basic difference between right and wrong, and that his actions could have dire consequences.  There's no indication he feels the slightest bit bad for anyone but himself.  Even his own son is a total afterthought.

 

I suppose you could look at Jerry as this hopelessly naive guy who goes around in a fog, and the tragedy that unfolds is a result of that.  That he's literally so dumb he doesn't know how hiring strange men to kidnap his wife could possibly end up hurting his family.  But, for me, that makes the movie less interesting.

 

 

I really, REALLY hope that not a single damned word I wrote on the guy was in ANY way taken as some manner of "defense" for the character. Lundegaard is as FAR from a "likable" character as they get. Regardless of whether his actions stem from just pure stupidity, something inherently more sinister, something in between the two, or what-the-fuck-ever, his actions ARE ultimately evil and certainly bring a tremendous deal of evil down on a whole lot of innocent people. 

 

The ONLY thing I was even remotely arguing was that I could KINDA see how someone might view him in a SOMEWHAT vaguely more favorable-ish light than the more outright violent and murderously psychotic and immediately dangerous and volatile Grimsrud. I could SEE mind you, not necessarily AGREE with. I understand the viewpoint, even if I don't personally feel it. Which I mostly don't.

 

I DO however think that Jerry IS in fact THAT fucking retarded. That he IS walking around his whole life in a complete fog of simply not thinking about what happens to others around him when he does something. The way Macy plays him, I just don't get any kind of sinister, calculating vibe off of him the way it (seems like) some people in this thread are making it sound like. All I see is genuine, honest to god, complete fucking stupidity. As I said, he's Dubya not Satan.

 

Via Macy's performance, I see a kind of small town pettiness and materialistic greed and envious superficiality ("My father in law has and makes more money than I do and can afford nicer things than my already nice enough things: I can't have that!") that's taken to such a ludicrous extreme and further fed on by such an incredible dimness and intellectual incuriosity that like I said, the degree of ignorance then becomes its own kind of callousness. Its callousness brought on by the fact that he's an absurdly dim bulb, not by the fact that he's some twisted sociopath. I just don't get that off of Macy's performance. But its STILL callousness all the same, regardless of its origin. I look at Macy's Jerry and I see clueless naivety taken to such absurd lengths that it results in catastrophe and misery and death for a lot of undeserving bystanders. 

 

And I very well made the point repeatedly about how much of an afterthought his son was to him: that's a HUGE factor in how unlikable and unsympathetic he ultimately is when push comes to shove. But like I said, when he sees his son crying for the first time, there IS a registered look of genuine horror on his face like "Oh shit, I didn't even THINK about it from THIS angle". Its STILL cruel and twisted and evil that he didn't AT ALL think of his kid when he concocted this stupid, idiotic, hair brained scheme (borne of childish jealousy since like I said, it doesn't even factor in to him that his family is getting on JUST FINE as they are already). Of fucking COURSE it is. But it wasn't an INTENTIONAL "I'm out to hurt my son" or even an "I don't care what happens to my son" sort of thing. I think that either view is giving the character's intellect WAY more credit than what the movie itself is (rather blatantly) trying to get across to us about how stupid he is.

 

In your interpretation, when Jerry cooked up the kidnapping scheme he either considered but set aside whatever impact it might have on his son, or he didn't think of it it because he's just that damned Satanically, cartoonishly evil and greedy. And I'M saying that both the movie and Macy's performance are CLEARLY telling us that its neither of these things because this is clearly a guy who simply does not have the critical thinking skills required to be that DELIBERATELY callous and twisted. His callousness and twistedness instead are incidental consequences of just how fucking stupid he is.

 

When Jerry first sees his kid crying Macy DOES play the scene like Jerry is JUST now realizing the true ramifications of what he's just done, and he certainly feels at least SOMETHING for his kid NOW that he has no choice but to look the consequences of his actions square in the eye (since like I said, I see Lundegaard as being someone who only sees the world around him strictly in terms of what's immediately in front of his face at that exact second without the slightest thought for anything remotely peripheral). 

 

This is all totally subjective semantics that can be argued a million different ways, and a lot of it is inference from the acting than anything else. But the point is, no, I don't find Jerry in any way a "sympathetic" or "redeemable" character. But I also don't see him as this cold, calculating figure. I see him as small-town ignorance and pettiness taken to its most ugly and hideous extremes. Which is STILL evil, just a different category of evil than the two criminals he hires to do the dirty work (who are both common, garden variety scum of about normal enough intelligence, or maybe just below).

 

And I disagree completely that this makes him any less interesting in any way. If anything, its all the more befitting of Fargo's whole "downhome folksiness" aspect that's such an overpowering part of the film's makeup. Lundegaard is the darkest, most twisted aspects of that "simple-minded smalltown regular Joe with a wife, kid, and nice house and okay job"... with an emphasis on the "simple-minded" part and the inherent dangers that that aspect of the stereotype represents. He's a man so stupid and naive and blind to both the world around him and the consequences of his actions, that it results in a series of absurdly tragic and senseless murders.

 

That to me, within the framework of Fargo's whole "small-town" theme, makes him a much MORE unique and interesting character (not to mention more fitting to the film itself)  than just some typically selfish, greedy guy who's greediness just comes from a normal sociopathically numb and uncaring apathy about his family and whatever it is he does. We've seen that character done a million different ways in a million different movies. This is something with a shade more nuance to it, nuance that's very much in-line with the thematics of the film and its setting and other characters. And again, that's NOT a moral defense of him. Please, please, PLEASE don't take it that way. I'm not a ghoul here. I'm just classifying his brand of shit headed evil more under the Sarah Palin variety than what seems to be a desire here to paint him as a much more mundane sort of shit heel.

 

This by the way, is made all the more interesting and layered by the fact that Jerry's brand of small town stupidity is clashed and contrasted directly against Marge's incredibly sharp detective's intellect, which is obscured on a surface-most level by the same superficial qualities through which most people would judge and write her off as being no sharper a pencil than Jerry based on similar outside qualities like her manner of speaking and the way she caries herself so pleasantly and unassumingly.

 

The immediate stereotype based on those superficial qualities is that she's another small-town hayseed... and of course, unlike Lundegaard who is that very stereotype taken so far off the deep end it becomes something incredibly twisted and fucked up, Marge couldn't be ANYTHING but and is Lundegaard's complete antithesis in just about every way possible. Lundegaard takes the ignorant small-town stereotype and runs with it as far as it'll go and THEN some into an incredibly fucked up new dimension of horribleness. Marge goes the exact fucking opposite way with it and subverts it in every way possible (to the point of being one of the coolest and most admirably well realized and progressively written female protagonists of 90's cinema even).

 

Y'know the more I think about it, MAN this is a great fucking movie.

Edited by Jaquio - 4/20/12 at 6:13pm

To clarify, I'm not talking about excusing Jerry or what he does. He does a lot of awful shit, and he gets what's coming to him. But for me, there's nothing satisfying or cathartic about his eventual downfall. It's not like the defeat (in most cases, of course, death) of the big bad in an action movie, or even, for example, when Gordon Gekko gets caught at the end of Wall Street. Instead of feeling any triumph or exaltation, I just shake my head at the whole situation and the sad little schmuck who put everybody through it. It's a tragic situation, and he's part of that tragedy, one more ruined life. My sympathy for him doesn't mean I don't think he deserves the way things end; justice is done, but there's just no joy or satisfaction in it.

 

Ultimately, I think it's bound up in Jerry's nature, in his DNA. He's just the kind of guy who doesn't think more than one step ahead, is blissfully unaware of long-term consequences, especially when looking at some short-term gain. It's not just with the kidnapping scheme, it's how his brain operates. In the "Tru-coat scene" (Now that's a painful one to watch. "You're a liar. A . . . a fucking liar!" And Jerry just hangs his head and looks at his desk like he's thinking, "Yeah, I know. I know I'm a piece of shit."), he's tried to weasel his way into a sale without stopping to consider the fact that the customer will find out about the unwanted Tru-coat. (It's not like he can even deliver on what he promises, since, as he says, the Tru-coat's applied in the factory.) And what does he do next? He does it right over again with the next customer! He's not malicious, he's just a complete moral coward. When he sees the easy out, he just can't say no. It's a classic tragic flaw.

 

It occurs to me that the character Jerry most reminds me of is Fredo in The Godfather, Part II. Here's a guy with a plush, comfortable life, but he's looked down on by everyone around him. He helps Hyman Roth only because he wants to do something that's "his own thing," not just a hand-out from his little brother. Like Jerry, it's not so much about the money itself as it is about the respect, the independence from some patronizing benefactor. And he's just as shortsighted and naive as Jerry in not imagining any harm would come to Michael and his family because of this. (Hey, rival mob bosses with a longstanding grudge, what could go wrong, right?) Just as Jerry doesn't get that he needs to face the music and stop trying to weasel his way out of his fuckups, it doesn't occur to Fredo that he's not cut out to be a capo and will just get played like a fiddle if he tries. ("I can handle things! I'm smart! Not like everybody says, dumb. I'm your older brother, Mike, and I was stepped over!" Now there's a gutwrenching scene if there ever was one. God, I miss John Cazale.) When Fredo finally gets what's coming to him in that little fishing boat on Lake Tahoe, I don't think anyone in the audience is thinking, "Yeah! That's what you get for betraying the family, you little traitor! Should've happened sooner!" It's a tragedy for everyone involved, a net loss, even if it's something that probably has to be done (from the organized-crime perspective, of course, not ordinary, law-abiding morality). That's pretty much how I feel about Jerry as well.

 

Sorry for the Russian novel, it's just I've done a lot of thinking about this today at work but couldn't post it.

 

Edited to add: Ah, I see that while I was writing The Brothers Karamazov, Jaquio posted War and Peace. Yeah, what a movie.

I'm surprised by the amount of people in North Dakota that hates this movie. For the most part, their reasoning is "We don't like the stupid fucking accents in the movie." 

It's brain destroying to think that with a film THIS palpably fucking tremendous, its merely an upper middle-ish tier movie in the Coens' oeuvre. Those guys have a filmography that's well, well off the goddamned Richter scale entirely.

 

I think of them, I think of Cronenberg, I think of still-early Jackson and Raimi, I think of Fincher, I think of Spike Lee, I think of Tarantino, I think of Gilliam, I think of Soderbergh, I think of Jarmusch, I think of Lynch, I think of early Gus Van Sant, I think of Paul Thomas Anderson, I think of Todd Solondz, I think of all the insane amount of stuff that was coming out of Hong Kong and Japan at the time that would take eons for me to list even just the highlights of here, and about a zillion countless other random assorted gems that were staples to me then and have aged magnificently upon revisits to this day...

 

...and then I recall a random chewer who once long, long ago casually mentioned on repeated occasions that the 90's were a horrible decade for movies. 

 

Whoever that person was, fuck him. Hard and preferably with something bladed and acid coated.

 

Edited by Bailey - 4/21/12 at 11:52am

 

 

I remember those days. I remember when there was a Coens backlash among some and I remember when Hudsucker was REALLY hated on (which even then left me utterly fucking baffled, as it was one of my favorites during my whole early-to-mid-90's "classic screwball comedy revival" phase growing up). I'm like you in that I never agreed with the assessment, and to this day I never understood how ANY critic or film fan worth their intellectual weight could stare in the eye a film as thematically rich and dense as Barton Fink and write the Coens off as "showy, snobby hacks". What fucking contrarian douchenozzles.

 

If anything, at the time, while I still loved Fargo don't get me wrong, I actually found it somewhat LACKING in comparison to Miller's and Fink. NOT because it didn't have any "showy setpieces" or whatever, but because both those films were REALLY fucking deep and richly rewarding to repeat viewings (and just plain joyful to chew on and bullshit about among friends). Which again, just points to how fucking SPOILED I was as a cinephile during the 90's when I could look at a film as incredible and richly layered and constructed as Fargo and see it as still great but kind of a quasi-letdown. Cut to now, where way, WAY too much of everything is Young Adult-obsessed and man-child nostalgia-baiting, and I dive on top of a genuinely smart, ballsy film made with actual fucking grown-ass adults in mind (here's looking at you Drive) like a ravenously starved hyena.