The Coen Brothers and the film ‘Fargo’

Joel Coen and Ethan Coen won the Academy Award for screenplay written for the screen with their film Fargo (1996). Frances McDormand won the Academy Award for her role as Marge Gunderson in the same movie. The film was granted five other Oscar nominations in the same year. While playing in the genres of crime, drama, and possibly thriller, the movie most correctly should be characterized as a dark comedy in small town America.

(William H. Macy stars as Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo).

The movie starts with Jerry Lundegaard, as portrayed by William H. Macy, contracting with two criminals to kidnap his wife in order to extort money from his father-in-law.  Lundegaard’s relationship with both his wife and her father was too weak to ask for a loan. The transaction is established in a backwoods bar in or around the winter environs of Fargo, North Dakota.

(Peter Stormare, right, and Steve Buscemi in Fargo).

The heavily dysfunctional criminals contracted for the kidnapping were Carol Showalter, as played by Steve Buscemi, and Gaear Grimsrud as portrayed by Peter Stormare. Harve Presnell plays Wade Gustafson, the domineering father to Jerry Lundegaard. As you may be detecting, the movie characters were given Nordic names. Actors spoke with accents to match. The aim here was comedic effect.

(Harve Presnell, left, and William H. Macy).

The foil in much of the movie’s shenanigans is pregnant policewoman Marge Gunderson, who we learned is portrayed by Academy Award winner Frances McDormand. Gunderson, the character, is married to Norm Gunderson. Norm Gunderson, as portrayed by John Carroll Lynch, is the bumbling yet loving and supportive husband with oddly homey characteristics that fit in remarkably well with all the homespun feel of this entire film.

(Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson in Fargo).

Marge Gunderson, besides giving us the realism of a woman seven months pregnant, shows marvelously comedic restraint in tolerating truly appalling small town behavior throughout the film. The scenes including and alluding to Mike Yanagita highlight essential qualities of Marge for the audience.

(John Carroll Lynch as Norm Gunderson in Fargo).

Without having given away all of the jokes, plot, and comedy contained within this movie, let me articulate that this movie portrays the odd humor of the Coen Brothers well. The emotional impact for this movie for the pair forecasts some of the strange twists in storytelling and feel that future movies from these two would would foster. As mentioned, these two did win the Academy Award for the impact this film had for the folks voting for the Academy Awards following the 1996 movie year.

(Joel Coen, left, and Ethan Coen).

Fargo aims for an odd mixture of humor, awkwardness, and joke telling that is homie and effective in its own way. The humor is insufficiently main stream while being distinctly on brand for the Coen Brothers to recommend watching. My rating for the movie Fargo is 3.50-stars on a scale of one-to-five stars.

Matt – Saturday, February 23, 2019

Top 20 Movie “Do the Right Thing”

Top 20 Movie Do The Right Thing (1989) ranks 7th in Matt Lynn Digital’s Top 20 Movies in ranked order listing. This critical look at race relations, political issues, urban crime and violence brought film producer, director, writer, and actor Spike Lee an Academy Award nomination for the best writing category for screenplay written directly for the screen.

The film stands as a testament to acknowledging racial tension in a way that speaks with sympathy to the perspectives of many sides. As the Roger Ebert review of Do The Right Thing says

“[Spike Lee] didn’t draw lines or take sides but simply looked with sadness at one racial flashpoint that stood for many others.”

(Spike Lee as Mookie in Do The Right Thing)

Do the Right Thing tells the story of a day in the life of one Brooklyn street. We meet the neighbors and the neighborhood, seeing in small steps how a heated, hot day in the life of a neighborhood looks and feels like. We see the humanity and the frustration as a neighborhood living in bigotry boils over into violence, and the setting of a revenge fire in the face of an unprovoked murder at the hands of the police.

 (Love and Hate for Radio Raheem as played by Bill Nunn in Do the Right Thing)

It is the loud music of Radio Raheem’s boom box, in concert with the demands of Buggin Out (played by Giancarlo Esposito) to see African American faces on the wall of Sal’s Pizzeria that ostensibly leads to the film’s resolution. Sal (played by Danny Aiello) takes a bite of hate out of the booming sound of Radio Raheem’s boom box, symbolically answering one form of disrespect (the loudness) with another (property destruction). The pizzeria is destroyed while Raheem loses his life; the inequality of this exchange given that insurance can rebuild a pizzeria is the testimony that speaks loudest.

As Rosie Perez, who played Tina in the film, is quoted as saying in the 20th anniversary DVD for Do the Right Thing:

“I saw the magic of the filmmaking…There’s a science to it. And it’s science, plus love, plus art, plus talent. And that occurred, and that’s why I think this movie is an American classic. I really do. I really do. Hands down. Hands down. Hands down.”

Do the Right Thing is our eighth (8th) ranked film. Twenty-eight years after the initial release, the message of this film still stands up today.

Matt – Saturday, December 9, 2017