Noah Hawley
Fargo

[Contains plot spoilers]

At first, I feared that this FX TV series written by Noah Hawley and also produced by the Coen brothers was too similar to the great 1996 film. That feeling lingered for a good part of the first episode, The Crocodile’s Dilemma, which features some blatantly common elements with the film: linking Lester Nygaard to Jerry Lundegaard is indeed an automatic operation, just like associating Molly with Marge; the bloody dialogues during meals are a common trope to the Gundersons (1996) and the Thurmans (2014). A deep continuity between the two works is the encounter of a mediocre man (Lester/Jerry) with violence and his progressive moral corruption. If we add the two hitmen Mr. Numbers and Mr. Wrench, who somehow resemble the legendary Buscemi – Stormare, we can understand how risky the whole operation was.

In this sense, Noah Hawley’s work is something monumental: a TV series like Fargo owes its greatness primarily to whoever penned the screenplay, even though there are numerous precious directorial details. I wouldn’t even know where to begin … What surprised me the most is undoubtedly the ability to juxtapose different tones that are almost antithetical: the fact that many moments are characterized by the grotesque, the tragicomic, the disorienting, does not prevent Fargo from igniting in truly tragic moments (when there is a focus on the victims' blood) or gags that truly belong to pure comedy (for instance, Mr. Numbers and Mr. Wrench communicating). It was indeed unthinkable to maintain the level of grotesque deformation of the film for a whole 10 episodes; they would have been too heavy.

A factor that helps create this emotional – stylistic puzzle is the perfect writing of the characters: we actually do not have truly complex figures, each individual has a main function, like the masks in a comedy, but the few fundamental traits of each one are rendered with incredible mastery. There isn’t a character whose essential human essence we haven’t understood, even the less important ones are sketched with great effectiveness. I think of Molly’s father, the two FBI agents, Sam Hess’s wife: even the most marginal profiles in the plot imprint themselves in the spectator's memory for their deformations or the rare, very rare virtues. Having a grotesque and exaggerated world to tell about helps a lot in finding memorable elements to apply to the various individuals.

Here we connect to one of the main themes of the series: in Fargo, we almost exclusively have characters who, for one reason or another, can be defined as negative. The quality of Hawley’s work consists in drawing them with different characteristics each time: we have good inepts, bad inepts, good brilliant people (Molly), and bad brilliant people (Malvo). The vast majority of the characters are afflicted by enormous flaws; there is Gus who does not perform his duty out of too much love for his daughter, there is Lester who is bullied by his wife, brother, former schoolmates; there is the sheriff who doesn’t feel like working and is full of prejudices like Bill Oswalt (Bob Odenkirk), there are the two mafia-orcs, capable but only to a certain extent, the two FBI agents who never get anything right. The list of despicable characters is endless: Chaz Nygaard, Linda Park, Stavros Milos, Don Chumph, Pearl Nygaard.

In this disheartening scenario, the few individuals with a brain stand out clearly: we have the true protagonist and the engine of the story, Lorne Malvo, and the lone force of good which is Molly; there would have been Sheriff Vern too, but with him gone, Molly finds herself having to fight alone (or almost alone, given Gus's growth) against Malvo but especially against the stubbornness of the new sheriff Oswalt. Hidden here is one of the deepest messages of Fargo: people must fight against their own stupidity and that of their neighbors before tackling the forces of evil.

The sequences in which Malvo carries out his massacres highlight the ease with which he manages to do so: he is an extraordinary mind, capable of pretending and reinventing his strategies. His intelligence is so fertile that his own words will serve as lessons to the two inepts Lester and Gus: episode 10. Morton’s Fork is exemplary not so much for Malvo's end, but rather because it shows us that Lester and Gus have learned the lesson, but in two different ways.

Both have tasted the devastating impact of evil, but Lester is internally consumed by guilt and thus develops a malicious, inhuman intelligence: we see him sacrifice his new wife Linda without hesitation (he had previously framed his brother) and set a deadly trap for Malvo using a bear trap. However, his evil cunning can’t prevail, and therefore he will condemn himself, running on thin ice (a metaphor for his entire story). His cunning maneuvering ability is highlighted when he solves the riddle of the fox, the rabbit, and the cabbage, which the FBI agent can’t unravel.

Conversely, Gus’s growth is pure, unstained; he also comes into contact with evil but remains unsullied. He understands the mechanics that drive the demonic Malvo without adopting them himself: he becomes like an animal that learns the strategies of predators to avoid them. This turning point is illustrated by the final dialogue with Malvo: Gus understands why the man sees so many shades of green, to evade predators like the one in front of him. He too has now learned to navigate in this threatening landscape.

To paint so many portraits while advancing a plot rich in digressions, the screenwriter worked magnificently not to waste even 1 minute of film: this is made possible by the essential construction (at times somewhat skeletal) of the characters and a plot that seems to be a puzzle but is only apparently so. The essential facts are not many, but they are continuously studied and analyzed by all the characters, either to try to solve the dilemma or to bury it definitively.

Or rather, it would be an unsolvable puzzle case if it weren’t for, as in Coen’s films, the arbitrariness of chance that helps the storylines to converge just when they seem to diverge. We can’t help but think of the two times Gus crosses paths with Malvo, of Molly speaking with the very same Gus at the police station. The whole story actually stems from a chance encounter between Lester and Malvo in the hospital; the long series of murders is due to Malvo's gratuitous choice to avenge Sam Hess's bullying of Lester, no one asked him to do so.

For about 8 episodes, a grotesque and disorienting dimension predominates; there is a decisive shift from the moment we see a year pass and find Molly pregnant. In the last two episodes, the distorting filter is removed, and we can taste all the tragic bitterness of the story: at this junction, Molly’s father, a man of utmost seriousness and honor, takes on a more important role, while the sheriff stops obstructing Molly’s actions and even announces that she will be the new sheriff. At these moments, the viewer finds themselves worried about Gus and his family’s fate: now that he and Molly are married and she is pregnant, we feel empathy toward one of the factions in the scene.

In the first 8 episodes, however, the camera’s eye did not favor one reading over another: Lester, though guilty, was not yet condemned, Molly, though intelligent, was not necessarily likable, Malvo was immoral but objectively brilliant. The last two episodes return to a more classic and emotional vision of things, and we find ourselves rooting for Molly and Gus against the infamous Malvo and the delinquent apprentice Lester.

To this richness of the screenplay, we must add the splendid direction of some episodes: I think primarily of episode 7. Who Shaves the Barber?, when Malvo massacres the entire mafia of Fargo in a sequence where we see nothing, as the camera follows the brutal man's movements from outside the building. The sounds and dialogues are enough to convey the idea of the bloodbath.

The stormy snow sequence of episode 6. Buridan’s Ass is also very beautiful, but the one in episode 9. A Fox, a Rabbit, and a Cabbage remains unforgettable when Malvo is at the bar of Molly's father while she is returning there: everything foreshadows a tragic encounter between the two, but it's merely suggestive editing designed to provoke our fears: the encounter will be only a near-miss.

The choice not to use an opening theme but instead focus on variation with always slightly disorienting and semantically distant details helps not to consolidate the idea of seriality but rather the sensation that it is a single, magnificent film of ten hours.