'Fargo' (R)

By Desson Howe
Washington Post Staff Writer
March 08, 1996

The Coen Brothers' "Fargo," a satirical, macabre saga set on the frigid plains of the American Midwest, works like a charm. A really weird charm, that is. Joel and Ethan Coen have discarded the pretentiousness of their most recent work ("Barton Fink," "The Hudsucker Proxy") in favor of the eerie spirit and deadpan-slapstick of their "Blood Simple" and "Raising Arizona."

And throughout the hypnotized Midwestern atmosphere of this movie-picture a cross between Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" and George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead"-Frances McDormand enjoys the comedic role of her career.

In the story, which is loosely based on real events, Minnesota car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) travels to Fargo, N.D., where he hires thugs Carl (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear (Peter Stormare) to have his wife (Kristin Rudrud) kidnapped. Lundegaard, frustrated by his lack of access to his rich father-in-law's money, intends to split the ransom with Carl and Gaear.

But after the henchmen execute Lundegaard's plan, they're stopped on the road by a trooper and all hell breaks loose. The abductors get away with their hostage, but leave a bloody scene behind them. This brings in Police Chief Marge Gunderson (McDormand), a sweet-tempered, rural American who's smart, sunny and heavily pregnant.

As Lundegaard and his collaborators attempt to negotiate with his father-in-law (Harve Presnell), Gunderson conducts her first murder investigation with remarkable, and comic, aplomb. At the crime scene, with bodies littered around an upturned car on the snowy plains, she performs her job with the chirrupy nature of a crossing guard.

"You see something down there, Marge?" asks her partner, as the pregnant inspector kneels next to the car. In the background, a corpse lies in the snow-covered field.

"No, I just think I'm going to barf," responds Gunderson sweetly. "Well, that passed," she declares a moment later. "Now I'm hungry again."

There's a nutty regionalism at work: A surrealistic statue of Paul Bunyan, for instance, greets visitors to Gunderson's little town; the goofy locals never seem to blink and pepper every sentence with a "Yaaaah." Into this, the Coens expertly weave the grotesque, as the kidnappers' desperate plight forces them to take bloodier measures.

But after watching this amusing, absorbing-but violent-story, I couldn't help wondering about Joel (the co-writer/director) and Ethan (the co-writer/producer) Coen. All of their movies, from "Blood Simple" on, seem so closed-in. Their stories are basically boxes within boxes: One revelation leads intriguingly to another. But the secret, the point, or the ultimate punch line becomes ever smaller.

Do they just sit agonizing at their word processors as they concoct bizarre scenarios involving bloodshed, irony and the strangest bits of dialogue they can dream up? Do these guys ever step outside themselves? Do they have a worldview, a feel for humanity, a sense of the great beyond? Do they read the papers?

It's worth seeing "Fargo" if you have the taste for this kind of irony, but please, also mutter a short prayer for the filmmakers to step outside once in a while and breathe a little oxygen.

FARGO (R) -- Contains sexual situations, profanity and gruesome violence.

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