Reely Bernie Faves: Fargo (1996)

With some of my favorite movies, I don’t quite know what I’m watching when I first see them.

I first saw Fargo in 1996 via HBO channel at a hotel with my parents while scoping out Gonzaga University for my future college.

We laughed at Frances McDormand’s “yah, you betchas” and cringed at pathetically nervous William H. Macy as he gummed up vehicle serial numbers to expand his inventory.

We adored the slow yet endearing observations of McDormand’s husband, Norm (John Carroll Lynch). We gagged at anything Steve Buscemi. We were speechless during the wood chipper scene.

We honestly didn’t quite know what we were watching. It was as if the Coen Brothers were introducing a new genre of film and teaching us how to react to it.

Apparently, all of the events depicted in the film took place in Minnesota in 1987. There really was a car salesman who committed numbers fraud, and, unfortunately, a woman named Helle Crafts actually did encounter a similar fate with a wood chipper (though, that was in Connecticut).

On a surface level, Fargo is simply about the car salesman who sets up the kidnapping of his wife with two thugs in order to gain ransom money to pay off his debts.

On a deeper level, Fargo is the bleakest, funniest, and oddest film I have ever seen, and I can think of no other brain collaboration behind its genius than the Coen Brothers.

My favorite scene? Believe it or not, it is in the title sequence at the very beginning when the snare and bass drum in Carter Burwell’s brilliant score crescendo into the hardanger fiddle motif, and through the snowy wasteland, we see not a vision of grandiose expectations but rather an emerging brown 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera.

It is the strangest revelation of contrasts: a simpleton vehicle accompanied by the music of a Scandinavian warrior.

Carter Burwell puts it best: “Fargo announces itself as a true-crime drama, and yet the perpetrators of the crime are buffoons. If the music plays the humor, it kills the suspense. If it plays the drama, will it kill the humor? The answer to this question seemed to be to play the drama with exaggerated seriousness as melodrama.”

By the way (no one ever talks about this), do you remember who was driving the Cutlas Ciera, what it was towing, and why?

At the center of the buffoon madness is the good heart of Marge Gunderson, Chief of Police of Brainerd, Minnesota.

She doesn’t necessarily see right through Jerry Lundegaard’s sloppy crime, former classmate’s sob story lie, or partner’s ignorance (“I’m not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work there, Lou.”), but like a nun full of grace, she does give them all the benefit of the doubt.

Her detective work is unobtrusive and charming. Although Fargo is slick with dark humor and guilty pleasure laughs, the Coen Brothers’ concoction and Frances McDormand character are the humor of relief.

Marge reminds us that the entire story was all “for a little bit of money.”

“There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’t you know that? And, here yah are, and it’s a beautiful day.”

Yes, even in Brainerd, Minnesota, it’s a beautiful day.

Reely Bernie Faves:

1. Amadeus (1984)

2. Magnolia (1999)

3. Poltergeist (1982)

4. Pulp Fiction (1994)

5. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

6. The Godfather Part II (1974)

7. Weekend at Bernie’s (1989)

8. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)

9. Goodfellas (1990)

10. Nosferatu (1922)

11. Pollock (2000)

12. Kicking and Screaming (1995)

13. Jaws (1975)

14. Fargo (1996)

15. Citizen Kane (1941)

16. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

17. The Endless Summer (1966)

18. Back to the Future (1985)

19. Angel Heart (1987)

20. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

21. The Goonies (1985)

22. Trainspotting (1996)

23. King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007)

24. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

25. Bambi (1942)

26. The Paradise Lost Trilogy (1996-2011)

27. Psycho (1960)

28. Parenthood (1989)

29. Swingers (1996)

30. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

31. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

32. Smoke (1995)

33. Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

34. A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

35. Edward Scissorhands (1990)

36. City of God (2002)

37. 1917 (2019)

38. Black Swan (2010)

39. School of Rock (2003)

40. Mulholland Drive (2001)

41. Groundhog Day (1993)

42. If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

43. The Greatest Showman (2017)

44. National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)

45. The Florida Project (2017)

46. Cinema Paradiso (1988)

47. So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993)

48. Shadowlands (1993)

49. Steve Jobs (2015)

50. ¡Three Amigos! (1986)