Fargo (1996 - The Coen Brothers)

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.

The Coen Brothers' first hugely successful film (with seven nominations, including two Oscars, a BAFTA, and a Cannes win) begins with this bizarre and seemingly serious, terrifying, and threatening assurance. However, it is part of the plot, as nothing that is recounted has a direct counterpart in a real event, but rather tangential connections with several separate cases, among which the only concrete one is the similarity with the infamous Helle Crafts murder in 1986 in Connecticut, where the body, chopped up in a wood chipper, was never found, and the conviction was based on the absence of this crucial evidence.

The production thus follows the escalation of criminal acts triggered by relatively minor motives, which, through subsequent developments, lead to multiple murders that seem unavoidable. Cornered by journalists, the Coen Brothers ended up publicly confirming that all the events in the plot had happened in similar conditions, but that they were just isolated stories "strung together" in a fiction set conveniently in the geographical space where they grew up, with familiar landmarks for them, and where their creative imagination could work more easily.

It is a seasonally fitting neo-noir (set in a harsh winter), in which Fargo is just the name of a remote settlement in the state of North Dakota. It is around that area where this chain of violent acts interdependent on each other takes place, supported by perfect logic, a solid, credible, and captivating story, with a smooth unfolding through discreet, elaborate, and extremely careful cinematography, and regional Midwest "singsong" accent of the protagonists in the soundtrack, which as previously mentioned, becomes an important character of the plot.

"Ya know, it's a beautiful day outside. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming. On days like these, kids like you should be burning in hell." - Gaear Grimsrud (played by Peter Stormare)

I say "around that area" because strictly speaking, the jurisdiction belongs to Brainerd, naturally and casually resolved by a (likable) agent of this community (in an exemplary role - Frances Louise McDormand won an Oscar for it). The influence of David Lynch is well-known in the Coen brothers' works (also evident here), and yet the scene in the Brainerd police department is a perfect quote, if not a direct replica, of the Twin Peaks series. The appearance of Jose Feliciano was the result of an agreement that did not include the interests of the musician's management company. That's why the footage of the performance is more allusive.

Not to be overlooked is the subtle dark humor and slight irony infused into the subgenre's tropes, along with the use of fade-to-black techniques (which transition between distinct episodes of the story), and the alternation of sequences with wide shots dominated by the whiteness of snow, the depth of the road, the perspective of the barbed wire fence, and the well-defined attitudes of the characters; all of which make following this complex spectacle a simple and highly enjoyable task.

The American Film Institute ranked Fargo at number 84 in its list of the top 100 films of all time, and personally, I believe that watching it (along with Blood Simple, the Coen brothers' previous production, with which it shares many similarities) should be a part of any cinephile's general film knowledge.

In his original review, Roger Joseph Ebert, the renowned film critic of the prestigious Chicago Sun-Times and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, described the film as "one of the best movies I've ever seen," adding that "it's films like Fargo that made me love cinema."