There’s nothing wrong with murder, ya know.  Especially if you’re going to get some money out of it.

Fargo is a modern classic.  It was nominated for seven Oscars in 1997, and won two.  It’s been on almost every top ten list, from AFI to Roger Ebert’s.  It is a comedy and a neo-noir at the same time.  One might wonder, at first, why it’s so hilarious. There’s little to laugh about it.  It is a gruesome film, rife with murder, blood, violence, sex and nonsensical scenes that leave the audience squirming in their seats.  It is creepy and unnerving.  It doesn’t force you to think really, and it doesn’t make you jump.  At no point are you on the edge of your seat.  At no point are you screaming or gasping for air.

What it does do is challenge your perception of normalcy because nothing in the film is normal, though everything seems normal.  There is a deceptive blanket that one wants to lift but is too afraid to do so.

Much of this film takes place in Brainerd, Minnesota, but writers/directors Joel and Ethan Coen (called collectively the Coen Brothers) decided to call it Fargo because it sounded better.  (As a matter of fact, only the first ten minutes of the film are set in Fargo, North Dakota.)

At its core, this “homespun murder story” is a social satire.  Upon review, every line and every shot is completely deliberate, from every “ya know” to every “you betcha.”  It mocks the concept of “Minnesota nice,” a stereotypical behavior of people in the Upper Midwest that includes forced hospitality, courtesy and passiveness. Under all the smiling and the “oh, ya know” mannerisms, every character, from the desperate car salesman to the mild-mannered police officer, there is something hiding.  In this film, there is no good and evil, no black and white. Even the pure white snow of the vast Minnesota landscape is stained with blood.  There is something dark about the friendliness and something humorous about the sinister.

The beginning of the film introduces it as a “true story.”  It tells us that “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.”  It is just like the Coen brothers to mess with your head.  The movie is indeed completely fictitious, as noted in the end credits, but the directors wanted to add to the unease.  They wanted you to feel uncomfortable thinking that the film was set in reality and actually happened.  This can’t be reality, you think.  The plot is too calculated and ridiculous, the characters too crazy.  But in a sense, they are real.  The film remains true in spirit.  The Coen brothers wanted to create a movie that portrayed their hometown of St. Louis Park.  They wanted to create a film that represents the people they grew up with, the stereotypical passive aggressiveness of their culture and the eerie but stunningly beautiful emptiness of the Midwest in the winter.

Ultimately, what’s chilling about the movie is not the senseless murder.  It’s the unsettling realization that not everything is as it seems.

Bonus:  The 1997 Fargo trailer