As a way of filling blog days when I don’t have anything else to write (though tomorrow will be a doozy) I’m going to run through a review of my favourite movies of all time. Two disclaimers:
1. They’re not in order. I’m just doing them as I get around to them in whatever order strikes my fancy.
2. I am not claiming these to be the BEST 50 movies of all time. They’re just my favourite. I gladly concede there will be many movies on my list that are not, in many ways, as good as movies that are not on my list.
Movie 1 is “Fargo,” released in 1996. It was writted, directed, edited, and everything elsed by Joel and Ethan Coen, and stars Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare, and Harve Presnell. The movie won two Academy Awards, for Best Actress (McDormand) and Best Screenplay, Original.
Frances McDormand as Chief Marge Gunderson. She won an Oscar. Trivia question; what movie did McDormand get her first Oscar nomination for?
I would think most people have seen “Fargo,” it being one of the most critically acclaimed, beloved, quotable, and video-rental-heavy movies of the last two decades, so I’m not going into a lot of detail on the movie’s plot and such, since either you’ve seen it or you should and I won’t totally spoil it. The movie is, to say the least, masterfully written and made in almost every respect. The direction and acting is astonishing; it says a lot that McDormand won the Oscar and I don’t think she was the best actor in this movie.
In fact – and this is one of three points I’m going to make here – I think the real acting tour de force here is by William H. Macy as poor, useless, bungling Jerry Lundegaard. Macy’s performance is sublime; he is every bit the middle class man in serious shit he’s supposed to be. He’s wonderfully shot and directed – watch how he always, always stomps the snow off his boots whenever coming inside, something Macy, a native Floridian, would have had to be told to do by the Coens, native Minnesotans. Every tick, every stammer, every word is amazingly genuine (in the sense of him being a car salesman over his head; his character lies like a rug.) In my mind Macy’s performance ranks with the best performances ever. Ever. As wonderful as Frances McDormand is, Macy was the real heart and soul of this film.
Which leads me to my second point. What I like to think about when watching movies is to ask myself a question; what is this movie trying to do or say? You can’t really rate movies based on “Acting” or “Screenwriting” unless you consider what the movie’s doing, what emotions it’s trying to elicit, or what message it’s trying to send. Which is a better movie: “Gandhi” or “Back To The Future”? Depends what you think the movies were trying to do.
“Fargo,” at its heart, is just trying to entertain; the Coens make a lot of movies just out of sheer fun. But it you think about it, “Fargo” is about honesty. “Fargo” has sometimes been criticized for making Minnesotans look stupid, but when you think about it that’s plainly idiotic; Marge Gunderson is as sharp as a tack and she’s the principal character, and the only objectively stupid characters are Showalter and Jerry. What divides the characters is, simply, honesty. Marge Gunderson is honest, a stand up cop who despite her folksy attitude is clearly the smartest person in the room at any given time. Jerry Lundegaard, who has everything a man could want, has gotten himself head-deep in shit through dishonesty (in case you’re one of the 88% of this movie’s viewers who doesn’t understand the scams being run in the movie, I will explain below.) The scum he hires to execute his plan are dishonest to the core, doublecrossing themselves and Jerry. At the end, those who lie have received their reward and taken some of the innocent with them, brought down by the honest and conscientious. The final threads are brought together by an honest man – Mr. Mohra, who “called it in” when a weird guy talked shit at his bar, is who directs the Brainerd police to the location of the kidnappers – and a dishonest man, Mike Yanagita, the emotionally troubled friend who tells lies that set off Marge’s suspicions about Jerry’s story, leading her back to him and causing him to reveal his bungiling treachery. As an additional ironic ocmment about honesty, the movie opens with a lie – that it’s a true story, which in fact it is not. Indeed, the title is a lie; very little happens in Fargo, with most of the film taking place in Minneapolis and Brainerd. (Though, according to the Coens, they called it Fargo because it just sounded better.)
Now, the scam explanation. So many numbers are thrown around in this film it’s hard to tell what’s what, but basically this is what happened:
1. Jerry has been embezzling money from the car dealership, using a scam that really did happen at the time (the 1980s.) He’s been getting money from GMAC, the loans corporation then owned by GM, as loans for cars that never existed. That’s why he gets two calls from “Reilly Deifenbach” at GMAC demanding vehicle identification numbers for cars Jerry has received money for. We don’t know exactly how much Jerry has embezzled but Deifenbach can’t account for $320,000 so it’s at least that much. It’s possible Jerry really did steal that much, or else he stole a smaller amount and has been embezzling more to pay back earlier phony loans; that much we do not know, but he’s in trouble.
2. Jerry hatches a plan to embezzle money directly from his father in law Wade on a parking lot real estate deal of some kind. That will, he thinks, net him $750,000 in principle. We don’t know how much of that he needs to pay off the debt, but he needs a lot.
3. It is apparent (from the dinner scene) that Jerry’s been trying this lot thing for some time without convincing his father in law, so he hatches Plan B; have his wife kidnapped and use his father to pay the ransom, keeping most of the money for himself. He tells his father in law the ransom is $1 million, while telling the kindnappers it’s only $80,000 plus a car; he plans to keep the difference and fix his problems with that money.
4. When he is surprised by Plan A (parking lot scam) maybe working out, although it eventually does not, he tries to call off Plan B (kidnapping,) another indication Plan A was Plan A all along.
5. But it’s too late; Plan B happens, and everything that could go wrong does.
Anyway, I just love this damned movie. It’s so thoroughly perfect. If you haven’t seen it, watch it… twice. Oh,and I’ve been to Brainerd, and they do talk like that.
ANSWER TO TRIVIA QUESTION: “Mississippi Burning.”
Rick The Great 