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Fargo (1996 film)

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Fargo
The theatrical poster.
Directed byJoel Coen
Ethan Coen (uncredited)
Written byJoel Coen
Ethan Coen
Produced byEthan Coen
Joel Coen (uncredited)
StarringFrances McDormand
William H. Macy
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 million (est.)

Fargo is a 1996 American thriller film produced, directed, and written by brothers Ethan and Joel Coen. Set in the Upper Midwest United States, it is the tale of a car salesman who hires two men to kidnap his wife for a ransom of $80,000. The crime sets off a chain of murders, which in turn are investigated by pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson. The film stars Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare, and Harve Presnell.

Fargo earned seven Academy Award nominations, winning two for Best Original Screenplay for the Coens, and Best Actress in a Leading Role for McDormand.[1] The film also won the British BAFTA Award and the Award for Best Director for Joel Coen at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival.

Plot summary

In 1987, Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), an Oldsmobile car salesman from Minneapolis, hatches a plan to end unspecified but severe financial troubles. Through a mechanic at the car dealership, a Native American ex-convict named Shep Proudfoot, he enlists the service of Swedish ex-convict Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare) and his partner, Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi). At a bar in Fargo, North Dakota, the three discuss Jerry's plan to kidnap his wife, Jean, who will be returned unharmed for a ransom 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 and boss, Wade Gustafson, that the ransom is $1 million intending to use the large difference to settle the debts he has accrued.

Initially, Jerry attempts to get the money from his father-in-law legitimately, as an investment in a parking lot business plan. When Wade shows interest in the deal, Jerry contacts Shep Proudfoot, attempting to have the kidnapping plan called off, but he quickly relents once Shep tells him he has no contact with the two. Meanwhile, Wade, refusing to trust Jerry with the investment principal, refuses Jerry's deal and instead announces plans to finance the carpark plan independently of Jerry.

Jerry's half-hearted attempt to abort the kidnapping plan being unsuccessful, 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 kidnappers insist that the police not be contacted or they will harm Jean. Wade relunctantly takes his advice, but only after the concurrence of his business partner Stan Grossman.

Later that night, the kidnapping plan takes a dramatic turn for the worse when a state trooper pulls over the two kidnappers on Minnesota State Highway 371 near Brainerd, Minnesota, as Carl has forgotten to replace the temporary car-dealership license plates on the car. 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 in place of license plates on the murderers' vehicle and an interview of two dim-witted prostitutes with whom the kidnappers had sex earlier. She discovers that Shep is linked to the murderers through phone records from a truck stop where the kidnappers met 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 awkwardly tries to flirt with her, before breaking down in tears.

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 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.

Meanwhile, Jerry must field phone calls from a GMAC representative from whom he has obtained a fraudulent loan, ostensibly for the purchase of cars for the dealership. The GMAC rep complains that he cannot read the vehicle identification numbers on the financing documents he faxed, and therefore cannot correlate the money ($320,000) with actual vehicles. The GMAC rep threatens legal action and an anxious Jerry sees his schemes collapsing around him.

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). Grimsrud has murdered Jerry's wife for simply annoying him. Carl initiates a dispute over who gets the car, and Grimsrud kills 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 woman he claimed to be his late wife and now has a restraining order). After hearing this, Marge returns to the car dealership and questions Jerry again because she suspects he too lied to her. Thinking he has been caught when Marge asks to see Wade, Jerry panics and flees the interview. Following up on a tip, she discovers where the kidnappers are hiding and comes on the property just in time to see Grimsrud pushing the last of Carl into a wood chipper. As Grimsrud flees, Marge shoots him in the leg and arrests him. On the drive back to the station, Marge talks to 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 Bismarck, North Dakota while on the run. In the final scene, Marge and her husband, Norm, sit in bed together watching television, and they discuss his mallard artwork winning the three-cent-stamp award. The fate of the hidden $920,000 remains unknown.

Cast and characters

File:Fargo Marge.jpg
Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson.
  • Frances McDormand as Marge Olmstead-Gunderson, the pregnant chief of police in Brainerd, Minnesota, investigating the murder of three people near her city. While seemingly a simpleton in character, she is not naive and demonstrates significant police-work and intelligence. She is very polite, likable, and intelligent.
  • William H. Macy as Jerome "Jerry" Lundegaard, a Twin Cities 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.
  • 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'" in a "general kinda' way."
  • Peter Stormare as Gaear Grimsrud, Showalter's sociopathic partner. He is mostly silent and 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 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 symbol for Prince—a native of Minneapolis—is cited as playing the role of "Victim in Field". In fact the actor was J. Todd Anderson.

Production

Fact vs. fiction

Fargo opens with the following 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 Coen brothers 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.[2] The main reason for the film's Minnesota setting was based on the fact that the Coens were born and raised in St. Louis Park, a suburb of Minneapolis.[3]

On the special edition DVD's trivia track for Fargo, (SPOILERS STARTING HERE)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 wood chipper.[4](SPOILERS ENDING HERE)

There was a rumor going around that a Japanese woman, Takako Konishi, died while searching for the missing money in the film, but the death was actually ruled a suicide and the media had invented the Fargo motive.[5] The end credits to Fargo bear the standard "all persons fictitious" disclaimer for a work of fiction.[6]

Title

The title to the film, "Fargo," is taken from the North Dakota city of Fargo, which plays a small role in the beginning of the film seen only in a wideshot for only a few seconds following a short scene set in a bar. Although a subtitle states the scene is set in Fargo, the actual shooting location for the bar was in central Minneapolis. 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, much of the film was, in fact, shot in North Dakota. On an interview on the special edition DVD, the Coens stated 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.[7] It has since been razed to make way for housing for people who are HIV-positive.[8]
  • The Pillsbury Ave. Minneapolis home of Doug Melroe and Denny Kemp includes the kitchen of the Lundegaards' house.[9]
  • The "Wally McCarthy Oldsmobile" car dealership located in the Minneapolis suburb of Richfield, located 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 two other Wally McCarthy dealerships still exist; the Wally McCarthy's Chevrolet Cadillac dealership in Forest Lake, and the Wally McCarthy Cadillac Hummer dealership in Roseville.
  • 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 and the building has been razed. It is now the location of an office building.
  • The kidnappers' hideout cabin is located north of Stillwater, Minnesota.
  • The Edina, Minnesota Police Station was used for interior shots of the Brainerd Police Station.[10]
  • Carl steals a license plate from the parking lot of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport.
  • Chanhassen Dinner Theatres 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 Marge questions 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").
  • West of Bathgate, North Dakota on Pembina County Highway 1 was the location of the statue of Paul Bunyan.[10]
  • The scene where the old bartender is shoveling his driveway as he describes to the police officer the story of the man "goin' crazy out there at the lake" was filmed in the small town of Hallock, Minnesota (one of the town's grain elevators is visible in the background).[10]

Reception

Template:Infobox movie certificates

Critical response

Fargo was met with universal critical acclaim.[11][12] 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 in 1998, 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.

The film's use of "Minnesota nice" and a "singsong" regional accent are remembered years later, with locals fielding requests to say "Yah, you betcha", and other lines from the movie.[13] According to the film's dialect coach, Liz Himelstein, "the accent was another character." She coached the cast using audio tapes and field trips.[14] Another dialog coach, Larissa Kokernot (who appeared onscreen playing a prostitute), notes that the "small-town, Minnesota accent is close to the sound of the Nords and the Swedes," which is "where the musicality comes from." She also helped McDormand understand Minnesota nice and the practice of head-nodding to show agreement.[15] Critic James Lileks, who grew up in Fargo and works in the Twin Cities, reacted by "scowling". He pointed out that very little of the film takes place in Fargo, and claimed he didn't know "a single Fargoan" who liked the film. He admits that "People in Minnesota do talk that way, ya know," but took umbrage at people asking him since, "Did you like that Fargo movie, then? Ya?" To him, familiarity means the accent isn't "inherently funny". He was also displeased with the amount of grisly violence.[16]

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. On March 1, 2006, for the film's tenth anniversary, the annual Fargo Film Festival showed Fargo by projecting the film on the side of the Radisson Hotel (the city's tallest building) in downtown Fargo.

Awards

Wins

Nominations

Soundtrack

Untitled

As with all the Coen Brothers' films, the score to Fargo is by Carter Burwell.[17]

The main musical motif is based on a Norwegian folk song[18] called "The Lost Sheep", or natively "Den Bortkomne Sauen". It has been recorded by Norwegian musician Annbjørg Lien on her album "Felefeber".[19]

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.[17]

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. "Brainard Minnesota" – 2:40
  16. "Safe Keeping" – 1:41
    • Album has an additional eight selections from the 'Barton Fink soundtrack.

Approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes into the film there is an instrumental (piano) rendition of Sometimes In Winter (Blood, Sweat & Tears) in the background.

Releases

  • The film has been released in several formats: VHS, Laserdisc and DVD.
  • 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 it was shaken, both snow and "blood" stirred up.
  • The film was first released on DVD on July 8, 1997 in a bare-bones edition and widescreen transfer.[20] A "Special Edition" DVD was released on September 30, 2003.[20]

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. ^ http://awardsdatabase.oscars.org/ampas_awards/DisplayMain.jsp?curTime=1218757523251
  2. ^ "Mike O'Rourke, "Reaction to 'Fargo' nomination", Brainerd Dispatch, February 11, 1997".
  3. ^ Smetanka, Mary Jane (August 8, 2008 - 11:11 PM). "We're ready for our close-up, Mr. Coen(s)". Minneapolis Star Tribune. Retrieved 2008-09-05. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ All about the Woodchipper Murder Case, by Mark Gado
  5. ^ Berczeller, Paul (Friday June 6 2003). "Death in the snow". The Guardian. Retrieved 2008-09-05. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  6. ^ Fargo from the Urban Legends Reference Pages
  7. ^ http://www.cgstock.com/894 (stock photo with location)
  8. ^ At last, a real home
  9. ^ http://startribune.com/1641/story/70938.html
  10. ^ a b c Fargo (1996) - Filming locations
  11. ^ Fargo Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes
  12. ^ Fargo (1996): Reviews
  13. ^ Robin McMacken (May 9 2004). "North Dakota: Where the accent is on friendship". St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved 2008-02-22. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  14. ^ Laura Randall (March 26 2004). "She Accentuates Film Performances". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 2008-02-22. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  15. ^ Chris Hewitt (October 19 2005). "Forget `Fargo' -- actors put accent on Minnesota realism". Saint Paul Pioneer Press. Retrieved 2008-02-22. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  16. ^ James Lileks (March 23 1996). "So, Should Oscar Forgo 'Fargo'? Ya?". Washington Post. Retrieved 2008-02-22. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  17. ^ a b "Soundtrack Details: Fargo". SoundtrackCollector.com. Retrieved 2007-10-11.
  18. ^ Braxton, Jonathan. "Fargo/Barton Fink". Retrieved 2007-10-11.
  19. ^ Lien, Annbjørg. "Felefeber: Den Bortkomne Sauen". {{cite web}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)
  20. ^ a b IMDB Fargo DVD Information
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