Joel & Ethan Coen
Fargo

After more than 10 years of honorable yet consistent career, even for the Coens the moment for the most coveted recognition arrived, the Oscar: Fargo, from 1996, the sixth work of the duo, won 2 awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actress for Frances McDormand, in addition to 5 other nominations (including Best Picture and Best Director).
Nothing more deserved, because Joel and Ethan were in a state of grace, the film exudes style, themes, and actors 100% Coen, a mature work where every piece is in its place.

Joel and Ethan, after the Hollywood megaproduction of The Hudsucker Proxy (which was a box office flop), decided to return to their first loves, American provinces and noir, defined as "in white" due to the setting (but the situations that arise will make us laugh quite a bit).
Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) is a weak and insecure Oldsmobile salesman from Minneapolis, he has a wife, a son, and a very rich and intrusive father-in-law, but despite this, he is in bad waters. To scrape up money he sets up a series of deceptions and scams, the most daring of which involves a fake kidnapping of his wife, with ransom to be paid by his father-in-law. For this, he hires two hitmen, the glacial and silent Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare) and the "curious" and talkative Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) to whom he promises a share of the ransom. The two will kidnap the woman but leave a long trail of blood behind them. On their trail will be Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), a pregnant police officer but no less up to the task.

First, let's make a technical note: the two brothers wanted to get as close as possible to the documentary style, with long dolly shots from above and filming both exteriors and interiors without artificial light. The coldness behind the camera fits well with the snowy landscapes that backdrop the story. The intent almost borders on sociological study as both the environments, objects, and the characters' accents (a trainer was even hired) are typical of the Midwest (which the two know well as they are native to it). Adding credibility should be the initial writing that informs us that the described events truly happened, when in fact they have not, because, despite the two brothers drawing inspiration from real news facts, the plot is entirely fictitious. The film consequently presents a metanarrative frame: the viewer, led to believe everything is true, accepts the absurdity and grotesque of the plot, is confused between reality and fiction, also because often real events seem more incredible than invented ones.

The cynical gaze towards American middle-class society, already expressed since Blood Simple, comes out in all its pessimism in the film: Jerry and his father-in-law Wade are more attached to money than to the wife's life, Gaear kills in cold blood for this and can’t even hold a conversation, Carl would squander all the loot on easy sex. The pettiness of people, hidden under apparent and reassuring normality, is allowed to commit its heinous deeds. Ethics is completely absent from this Dantean circle, it seems you can't even trust your husband, and when this lack combines with randomness and inefficiency, the result is an explosive cocktail of senseless violence, detached from rational causes; much blood flows across the snowy lands, but even the direct participants can’t explain it, engrossed as they are in the frantic race for money. Everyone is now addicted to violence: Gaear, in particular, is impassive whether watching a soap opera on TV or shooting innocents.
The one who goes at a noticeably slower pace but manages, unlike the others, to achieve her goals is Marge, the only protagonist, together with her husband Norm, who rises above the widespread moral baseness: theirs is a simple life, made of small loving daily gestures; in her male-dominated work, Marge uses all that others lack, common sense and logic, but at the same time is not naive, managing to sense the danger hidden even in old friends like Mike Yanagita. Despite this, even she doesn’t have a complete view of the events and fails to understand all the senselessness and violence. In the poetic final scene, she will say to Gaear:
"There’s more to life than a little money, you know. And here you are, and it's a beautiful day. I just don’t understand it.."
Just as in the already cited Blood Simple, only the viewer has the complete view of events and can answer Marge's question.

Alongside the directors' cynicism, their sarcastic and comedic tone increases. The ineptitude of Jerry and the serious lack of the two kidnappers, inserted into the dramatic context of the plot, can’t help but be hilarious; the Coens enjoy showing us moments that would clash in a typical noir, like the acting rehearsals Jerry does between himself to find the best tone to warn his father-in-law of the kidnapping, or the continuous bickering between Gaear and Carl, almost "Tarantinoesque" for how squalidly common they are, up to the gruesome finale where Carl's foot sticks out of a wood chipper.

It is a film in which more than one Coen topos returns, the kidnapping from Raising Arizona, the cynicism from Blood Simple, the violence from Miller's Crossing, but everything is taken to a higher level, a point of arrival but at the same time a starting point for the two directors; not by chance the same philosophical concept is the basis of No Country for Old Men, which can be seen as a "senior" version and moved from the snow to the desert of Fargo.

RATING = 9