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Fargo (1996 film)

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Fargo
The theatrical poster.
Directed byJoel Coen
Written byJoel and Ethan Coen
Produced byEthan Coen
StarringWilliam H. Macy
Frances McDormand
Steve Buscemi
Peter Stormare
Harve Presnell
CinematographyRoger Deakins
Edited byRoderick Jaynes
Music byCarter Burwell
Distributed byGramercy Pictures
Release dates
United States:
March 8, 1996
Canada:
April 5, 1996
United Kingdom:
May 31, 1996
Australia:
June 6, 1996
Running time
98 min.
CountriesUK
US
LanguageEnglish
Budget$7,000,000 (est)

Fargo is a 1996 American drama film written, directed and produced by the Coen Brothers.

Set in the Upper Midwest United States (the opening and closing scenes are set in North Dakota and the rest in Minnesota), it is the tale of a car salesman (William H. Macy), who has hired two men (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife for a ransom of US$1,000,000. The crime sets off a chain of murders, which are in turn investigated by pregnant policewoman Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand).

At the 69th Academy Awards, Fargo won two Oscars, for best original screenplay and for best actress in a leading role for Frances McDormand. The film also won the British BAFTA Award and several other international film awards, including the Award for Best Director (Joel Coen) at the Cannes Film Festival of 1996.

Plot

In 1987, Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), an Oldsmobile car salesman from Minneapolis, Minnesota with personal financial troubles, hatches a plan to end his financial difficulties. Through a mechanic at the car dealership, a Native American ex-convict named Shep Proudfoot, he enlists the service of Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare) and Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi), at a bar in Fargo, North Dakota to kidnap his wife, Jean, who will be returned unharmed for a payment of $80,000, half of which is to go to Jerry. Jerry's greater plan is to tell his wealthy, but antagonistic father-in-law, boss, Wade Gustafson, that the ransom is $1,000,000, intending to use the large difference to settle unspecified debts he has accrued.

Jerry attempts to get the money from his father-in-law but fails. So Jean is kidnapped from her home while Jerry is at work. When Jerry returns to his ransacked house, he calls and tells Wade about the situation. Jerry claims that the police are not to be notified – or Jean will be at risk.

Later that night, the kidnapping plan takes a dramatic turn for the worse when a state trooper pulls over the two kidnappers on Minn.Hwy.371 near Brainerd, Minnesota. After Carl botches an attempt at a bribe, Grimsrud pulls a pistol out of the glove compartment and kills the trooper. Two witnesses happen to drive by the crime scene and Grimsrud pursues and kills them as well.

The deaths are investigated the next morning by the local police chief and seven month pregnant Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand). She quickly figures out the chain of events and follows leads such as the dealer tags on the murderers' vehicle and interviewing two hookers the kidnappers had sex with earlier. While quietly piecing together clues, she discovers that Shep is linked to the murderers through phone records from a truck stop where the kidnappers meet with the hookers. Marge decides to take a trip to Minneapolis for investigations and to get together with an old friend from high school named Mike Yanagita who tells her he is now a widower and tries to flirt with her.

Marge interviews Shep and Jerry who both claim not to be involved in the situation. Shep later goes after Carl, (who has come to Minneapolis to collect the money from Jerry), interrupts him having sex with a hooker, and beats him up, for getting him in trouble and threatening his freedom on parole. Recovered, but humiliated and angry, Carl demands Jerry deliver him the money atop a parking garage; Wade, mistrustful of his son-in-law, decides to deliver the ransom himself but, unwisely, attempts to bully Carl, refusing to hand over the money until his daughter is returned. Carl and Wade exchange gunfire, leaving Wade dead and Carl bleeding heavily from a bullet wound to the jaw. Leaving the parking garage, Carl also shoots and kills the lot attendant when the attendant does not open the gate.

Throughout these scenes, several scenes are intercut with Jerry attempting to talk his way out of the scam which has put him in this predicament: He has been scamming GMAC by having them finance phony cars, while he has (apparently) pocketed the money. The GMAC representative complains that he cannot read the VIN numbers on the financing documents he sent, and therefore cannot correlate the money ($320,000) with actual vehicles.

Discovering that the case contains a million dollars, Carl buries most of the money by the side of a remote, snowy prairie highway and crudely marks the location with an ice scraper so he can find it later. Carl returns to their backwoods hideout on Moose Lake (with the expected $80,000). Unfortunately, Grimsrud has murdered Jerry's wife for simply annoying him. Carl initiates a dispute over who gets the car. Grimsrud dispatches him with an axe.

Before leaving Minneapolis on her way back to Brainerd, Marge learns that her friend Mike lied to her about being a widower (he was really stalking the girl he claimed to be his late wife and now has a restraining order). After hearing this, Marge returns to the auto dealership and questions Jerry again because she thinks he too lied to her. Thinking he has been caught when Marge asks to see Wade, Jerry panics and flees the interview. She soon gets wind of where the kidnappers are holing up and comes on the property just in time to see Grimsrud pushing the last of Carl into a wood chipper. As Grimsrud attempts to run, Marge shoots him in the leg and arrests him. On the drive back to the station, Marge talks to the clearly sociopathic Grimsrud, unable to comprehend how he can do what he does "for a little bit of money."

Jerry is later arrested in a motel outside of Bismarck, North Dakota as he makes a break for it. In the final scene, Marge and her husband, Norm, sit in bed together watching television, talking about their child to be. The fate of the hidden $920,000 remains unknown.

Cast and characters

File:Fargo Marge.jpg
Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson.
  • William H. Macy as Jerry Lundegaard, a Minneapolis-St. Paul car dealer who is heavily in debt and hires two men to kidnap his wife so he can collect the ransom from his wealthy father in law.
  • Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson, the pregnant chief of police in Brainerd, Minnesota, investigating the murder of three people near her city.
  • Steve Buscemi as Carl Showalter, a talkative small-time crook who is hired by Lundegaard to kidnap Lundegaard's wife. The people who run into him invariably describe him as "kinda funny-lookin'."
  • Peter Stormare as Gaear Grimsrud, a Showalter's sociopathic partner, he is mostly silent but is capable of extreme violence. He is a heavy smoker of Marlboros.
  • Harve Presnell as Wade Gustafson, the wealthy owner of the Oldsmobile dealership where Jerry Lundegaard works and the father of Jerry's wife.
  • Kristin Rudrüd as Jean Lundegaard, Jerry Lundegaard's wife, who is kidnapped.
  • Tony Denman as Scotty Lundegaard, Jerry and Jean's middle-school-age son.
  • Larry Brandenburg as Stan Grossman, accountant and business partner of Wade Gustafson.
  • Steve Reevis as Shep Proudfoot, an ex-convict and mechanic at the car dealership. He puts Jerry in contact with Carl and Gaear.
  • John Carroll Lynch as Norm Gunderson, husband of Police Chief Marge Gunderson, and a wildlife artist vying to have his work selected for use on a postage stamp.
  • Steve Park as Mike Yanagita, a high-school classmate of Marge Gunderson.
  • In the credits the modified sigil for Prince (musician), a native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is cited as playing the role of 'Victim in Field'. In fact the actor was J. Todd Anderson.

Production

Fact vs. fiction

Fargo begins with the opening text:

THIS IS A TRUE STORY. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.

Although the film itself is completely fictional, the Coens claim that many of the events that take place in the movie were actually based on true events from other cases that they threw together to make one story. Joel Coen said, "We weren't interested in that kind of fidelity. The basic events are the same as in the real case, but the characterizations are fully imagined." He later noted, "If an audience believes that something's based on a real event, it gives you permission to do things they might otherwise not accept."

The Coens claim the actual murders took place, but not in Minnesota.[1] The main reason for the film's Minnesota setting[citation needed] was based on the fact that the Coens were born and raised in St. Louis Park, a suburb of Minneapolis.

On the Special Edition DVD's trivia track for Fargo, it is revealed that the main case for the movie's inspiration was based on the infamous 1986 murder of Helle Crafts from Connecticut at the hands of her husband, Richard, who killed her and disposed of her body through a woodchipper.[2]

The end credits to Fargo bear the standard disclaimer for a work of fiction.[3]

In November 2001, a Japanese woman named Takako Konishi arrived in Bismarck, North Dakota, where with the help of a scrawled map and due to the inherent language barrier, police deduced that she must have been in search of the lost cache of money that was buried in the film. She was found dead in the woods six days later near Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, possibly due to a combination of drugs and exposure to the cold.[4] However, three weeks after her death, her parents in Japan received a suicide note that she had sent several days before she died -- the story of her searching for the cache was, ironically, fictional.[5]

Title

The title to the film, Fargo, is named after the city of Fargo, North Dakota. However, the city itself plays a small role in the film only being seen in a wideshot for only a few seconds following one shot scene set in a bar. The rest of the film is completely set around Minnesota mostly in Minneapolis and Brainerd. However, due to the mild winter of Minnesota during production, a lot of the film was, in fact, shot in North Dakota. On an interview on the Special Edition DVD, the Coen's claimed that they titled the movie "Fargo" because it sounded more interesting than "Brainerd".

Locations

The unseasonably mild winter weather of early 1995 forced the crew to move locations frequently to find suitable snow-covered landscapes. Fake snow had to be used for many scenes. Pools and streams of meltwater are visible in many scenes. Fargo was also shot very cheaply after the Coens' recent box office failure, The Hudsucker Proxy.

Locations used during production include:

  • King of Clubs, a bar shown at the beginning of the film was located in Northeast, Minneapolis on Central Avenue.[6] It has since been razed to make way for housing for people who are HIV-positive.[7]
  • The Pillsbury Ave, Minneapolis home of Doug Melroe and Denny Kemp includes the kitchen of the Lundegaards' house.[8]
  • The "Wally McCarthy Oldsmobile" car dealership located in the Minneapolis suburb of Richfield, off of Interstate 494 and Penn Avenue. It has since been razed, and the site is currently home to Best Buy's corporate headquarters. The Wally McCarthy dealership still exists, now located in Roseville, to the north of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
  • Ember's, a restaurant just west of the Louisiana exit on the frontage road (Wayzata Blvd.) of Interstate 394 in St. Louis Park. The location is now out of business.
  • Scenes with the Paul Bunyan statue were filmed on Pembina County Highway 1 near Bathgate, North Dakota.
  • The kidnapper's hideout cabin is located north of Stillwater, Minnesota.
  • The Edina, Minnesota Police Station was used for interior shots of the Brainerd Police Station.[9]
  • Carl steals a license plate from the parking lot of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport.
  • Chanhassen Dinner Theatre was used for the José Feliciano concert.
  • The Minneapolis Club Parking Ramp (located on 8th St. and 3rd Ave, Minneapolis, Minnesota) was used for the scene where Wade delivers the money to Carl.
  • Lakeside Club (located 10 Old Wildwood Rd, Mahtomedi, Minnesota) was used for the scene where police chief questions two strippers. The two are the hookers who were apparently hired to service the hired goons (one who was "funny-lookin'", and the other who was older and "looked like the Marlboro man").

Reception

Template:Infobox movie certificates

Critical response

Film critic Roger Ebert named Fargo as his fourth favorite film of the 1990s (he also named it 'best of 1996'). In his original review Ebert called it "one of the best films I've ever seen" and explained that "films like Fargo are why I love the movies." Many prominent critics named it 'best of the year' including Joel Siegel, Lisa Schwartzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, Gene Siskel, and Leonard Maltin. Fargo has the honor of being one of the very few films to ever receive a unanimous 'A' rating from the critical mass of ratings at Entertainment Weekly.

The film was ranked #84 on the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Movies" list, although it was removed from the 2007 version, and #93 on its "100 Years...100 Laughs" list. The character, Marge Gunderson, was ranked #33 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains. In 2006, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and is one of the leading examples of the neo-noir and comedy genre.

Film festivals

Fargo was screened at many film festivals. It was in the main competition at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the prize for best director. Other festival screenings included the Pusan International Film Festival, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and the Naples Film Festival. The film also shows at the annual Fargo Film Festival in Fargo, North Dakota.

Awards

Wins

Nominations

Soundtrack

Untitled

As with all the Coen Brothers' films, the score to Fargo is by Carter Burwell.[10]

The main musical motif is based on a Norwegian folk song[11] called "The Lost Sheep", or natively "Den Bortkomne Sauen". It has been recorded by Norwegian musician Annbjørg Lien on her album "Felefeber".[12]

Other songs in the film include "Big City" by Merle Haggard, heard in the Fargo, North Dakota bar where Jerry Lundegaard meets with kidnappers Carl Showalter and Gaear Grimsrud, and "Let's Find Each Other Tonight", a live nightclub performance by José Feliciano that is viewed by Showalter and a female escort. Neither song appears on the soundtrack album.

The soundtrack album was released in 1996 on TVT Records, combined with selections from the score to Barton Fink.[10]

Track listing

All selections composed by Carter Burwell.

  1. "Fargo, North Dakota" – 2:47
  2. "Moose Lake" – 0:41
  3. "A Lot of Woe" – 0:49
  4. "Forced Entry" – 1:23
  5. "The Ozone" – 0:57
  6. "The Trooper's End" – 1:06
  7. "Chewing on it" – 0:51
  8. "Rubbernecking" – 2:04
  9. "Dance of the Sierra" – 1:23
  10. "The Mallard" – 0:58
  11. "Delivery" – 4:46
  12. "Bismark, North Dakota" – 1:02
  13. "Paul Bunyan" – 0:35
  14. "The Eager Beaver" – 3:10
  15. "Brainerd Minnesota" – 2:40
  16. "Safe Keeping" – 1:41
    • Album has an additional eight selections from the 'Barton Fink soundtrack.

VHS release

A special edition VHS release came in 1996 that along with the video tape, also included a snow globe depicting the wood chipper scene. When shook, both snow and blood stirred up.

DVD release

The film was first released on DVD on July 8, 1997 in a bare-bones edition and widescreen transfer.[13] A "Special Edition" DVD was released on September 30, 2003.[13]

Television spin-off

In 1997 a pilot was filmed for a television series based on the film. Set in Brainerd, it starred Edie Falco as Marge Gunderson. Directed by Kathy Bates, the episode was shown during Trio's 2003 "Brilliant But Cancelled" series of failed TV shows.

References

  1. ^ "Mike O'Rourke, "Reaction to 'Fargo' nomination", Brainerd Dispatch, February 11, 1997".
  2. ^ http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/family/woodchipper_murder/index.html
  3. ^ Fargo from the Urban Legends Reference Pages
  4. ^ Winter, Deena (January 8, 2002). "Coroner unable to find cause of death of Japanese woman". Bismarck Tribune.
  5. ^ Berczeller, Paul (June 6, 2003). "Death in the snow". The Guardian.
  6. ^ http://www.cgstock.com/894 (stock photo with location)
  7. ^ http://www.ccht.org/At_last_a_real_home.html
  8. ^ http://startribune.com/1641/story/70938.html
  9. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116282/locations
  10. ^ a b "Soundtrack Details: Fargo". SoundtrackCollector.com. Retrieved 2007-10-11.
  11. ^ Braxton, Jonathan. "Fargo/Barton Fink". Retrieved 2007-10-11.
  12. ^ Lien, Annbjørg. "Felefeber: Den Bortkomne Sauen". Retrieved 2007-10-21.
  13. ^ a b IMDB Fargo DVD Information
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