Fargo

I still remember the first time I saw Fargo. To be honest, I hated it. All I knew about the movie is that it was from the same people who made Raising Arizona, and I went in expecting something similar.

Trust me. That ain't Fargo.

What I got was this uneasy mixture of black comedy and brutal, gory violence. Sure, there were accents again, maybe played for laughs, and some good lines, but this wasn't some light caper film. This was stark and grim, and it made for a rough watch. What's more, I thought, it really seems like the people who made this have nothing but contempt for their characters, and that contempt made watching the movie seem more like I was participating in some cruel experiment (the kind of thing, in recent years, I've started to find in Michael Haneke films like Funny Games - which, ironically, I thought was brilliant).

Cut to the present. I'm screening Fargo for my film club. I've seen it half a dozen times since that first viewing. I introduce it to my students as one of the essential films of the 90s, and one of the best films of that decade. Although I don't think it's my favorite work by the Coens (now my favorite working directors), it's definitely among their best.

What happened?

Let's put it simply: I was really wrong.

Expectations, I think, can greatly influence your experience with a film. Expecting a slapstick comedy from Fargo and then watching it will set you up for a uniquely uncomfortable experience, because while Fargo is, without a doubt, incredibly funny, it's also deeply uncomfortable, and part of what makes it so effective is the way it juxtaposes a low-key, affable, character-driven humor with brutal and shocking acts of violence all the more jarring for their unflinching nature.

It's that juxtaposition, I think, that accounts for not only Fargo's greatness, but for the way it endures. So many crime films go one of a few directions. You have the colorful and stylish chaos of a Reservoir Dogs, or the slick professionalism of an Ocean's Eleven, or the stylized brilliance of something like Heist.

But Fargo is none of these things. The infamous poster above really gets at the heart of the film. Fargo, in many ways, is one of the most realistic of crime films, because it understands that, at their core, people are selfish, dumb, and frequently stupid. One only needs to read News of the Weird on any given week for a reminder of how inept most criminals really are. In the real world, there aren't brilliant criminal masterminds orchestrating complex machinations for profit. Crimes are simple, and undone by stupid mistakes.

What I mistook for callousness and hatred of its characters in Fargo is something far more complex: it's an understanding of human nature. There's no doubt that the Coens find their characters pitiful, but they mean that in the truest sense: deserving of pity. Anyone who doesn't think this is true needs only watch the long shot of William H. Macy trudging to his car through the parking lot before having a meltdown as he scrapes the ice, or Mike Yamagita's tearful breakdown to Marge. There's a humanity here, and while the Coens recognize the comedy of it all, there's an empathy and sadness underneath the humor that makes Fargo linger long after its gone.

But more than that, there's Marge Gunderson, the heart and soul of the film. As cynical and brutal as Fargo is, the fact that it closes with Marge and her husband says all there really is to say about the film. Despite all the violence, despite all the selfishness and insanity, as Marge says, "We're doing all right." Marge is the film's moral center, and her speech to an arrested criminal near the film's end is one of the most affecting commentaries on the world written in film - comparable, I think, to Tommy Lee Jones's closing monologue in No Country for Old Men:

And for what? For a little bit of money. There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don'tcha know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well. I just don't understand it.

It doesn't seem like much, but after all that comes before it, it's the most poetic epitaph imaginable for the film, and its weary fatalism nicely sums up the work that precedes it.

There aren't many films quite like Fargo, and I could write for days about it. But on this viewing, what's left me most profoundly affected is the undercurrent of thoughtful sadness to it all. Yes, the film is blisteringly funny, brilliantly filmed, perfectly written, masterfully performed, and more. But the reason it lingers for so long after watching, and the reason it remains a cinematic masterpiece, is for its uncommonly perceptive look at the world, and its ability to not only find the humor, but to understand it.