Film of the week
Fargo
The Coen Brothers' most popular film and a deserved box-office success was the apparently true story of a kidnap gone wrong in Brainerd, Minnesota. Nothing in or about a Coen movie is ever quite that simple, however. First, the tale is almost secondary to the contextual framing and the characters.
There is the pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) and her mousy husband who designs stamps; the two oddball villains (silent Peter Stormare and motormouth Steve Buscemi) and the panicky car salesman who sets the kidnap in motion then tries to wriggle out of the escalating mayhem (William H. Macy). Then there is the unique language which is hokey ScandAmerican. The blinding white-out of the ever-present snow establishes an eerie, haunting quality which resonates right through the movie that steers from thriller to black comedy to satire to something that there probably isn't a name for yet.
Factor in Carter Burwell's mournful, chilling score and the result is one of the Coen's most strangely compassionate movies which took them to the A-list party. A truly great movie. And it was produced by Working Title - that's a British company, folks.
