Turning to Stephen Murray's Minnesota challenge, on this relatively balmy Valentine's Day in a San Francisco February, I contemplate not the Coen Brothers' setting for their 1996 classic FARGO, the little town of Brainerd (in Stephen's home state) but what will be on this day the bleak, wintry country between Revenna and Chardon, in Northeastern Ohio.

On my return from military service, and entering Graduate School at Kent State University, I remember hitchhiking many a winter weekend west from Kent to Revenna, then turning north for the forty miles to U.S. Route 20. The narrow route would take me to Mantua Corners, the last outpost of civilization between there and Lake Erie. On either side of the road the snowy fields stretched away, punctuated by farm houses, like so many raisins in a frozen bread pudding, and there would always be the shriek of crows in my ears. Somewhere to my left and right were the surreal snow-covered towns of Lebanon, Palestine and places with equally exotic names.

Brainerd, in the Coens' home country of Minnesota, must be like one of those Ohio towns. It certainly seems so in the film. The key to FARGO is that everyone in it is dysfunctional, selfish, driven, greedy or a criminal personality, except one loving woman at the film's center.

Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) is a typical American Middle Class climber, a Babbitt who would have been the olive in Minnesotan Sinclair Lewis' Martini. Wingaard is the assistant general manager of Brainerd's only car dealership. Jerry has married the daughter -- Jean (Kristin Rudrud) -- of his gruff, stingy, dictatorial boss, Wade Gustafson (Harve Presnell), but the union has not helped him to persuade his father-in-law to finance his ambitious financial schemes, or to support his family's rather extravagant life style in such a depleted rural area. Depressed, Jerry has borrowed from banks and embezzled funds from the dealership its suppliers accounts. Now he is desperate to extricate himself, to cover up the facts of his ineptitude.

Jerry Lundegaard hatches an absurd plan to have his own wife kidnapped. Beneath a ferocious statue of Brainerd native son, Paul Bunyan, he drives through a Minnesota winter night, down the state line to a bar outside of Fargo, North Dakota, where he has arranged to meet a couple of small time criminals, recommended to Jerry by one of his car mechanics, an ex-con. The criminals, Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and Gaer Grimsrud (Peter Stomare) are a study in contrasts. Carl is a small, wiry, talkative speed-freak, the "brain" of the team, while Gaer is a quiet, sullen, giant psychopath, given to sudden, unpredictable violent acts.

The terms of the agreement are a split of $80,000 in ransom, to be chiseled out of Jerry's father-in-law, and a new car "stolen" from the Brainerd car lot. It will be a private transaction, and the police will not be informed. What Jerry does not tell the criminals is that he intends to inform Wade Gustafson that the ransom is really a million dollars, and that Jerry will pocket most of it.

On the night of the plan's execution in Brainerd, as such hare-brained dreams often do, events go frightfully and crazily wrong. An innocent couple and a Highway Patrolman are killed, their corpses left by the roadside to freeze.

Early the next morning, Norm and Marge Gunderson (John Carroll Lynch and Frances McDormand) are asleep, when the phone rings. Defeating our "normal" expectations, Marge is the township chief of police, and her husband Norm is a recognized nature painter (ducks). An added twist is that Marge is some months pregnant.

From here out, the greed and insanity of Jerry's scheme is balanced by the quiet, efficient, humanistic procedures of Chief Marge Gunderson. If you have not seen FARGO, which was nominated for seven Oscars and won two -- Best Actress (McDormand) and Original Screenplay (the Coens) -- I will not spoil it for you; if you have seen it, you may easily re-live some of the many dryly comic, ironic, horrible and very loving scenes in which the mother-to-be Chief Marge Gunderson takes part.

Nor will I dwell on the superb performances of McDormand, Macy, Presnell, Buscemi and Stomare (a stalwart of Ingmar Bergman, one of the Coens' idols).

Photographed in Brainerd, Hallock, Richfield, Stillwater, Willernie, Minneapolis, and St. Louis Park (childhood home of the Coens), Minnesota; and Grand Forks in North Dakota -- the production company had to chase snow as the shoot extended into Spring -- FARGO is a rueful Valentine to the countryside and its people, and to Frances McDormand, who is related by marriage to the Coens.

FARGO is one of the American Film Institute's 100 Best Films and at the top of its list of Comedies.

This review is my Valentine to "A Minnesota in My Mind," to my memories of Northeastern Ohio in Winter, and to that brilliant son of Minnesota, Stephen Murray (and all the lovers of Minnesota in this Write-Off).

---------------

Contributions to Stephen Murray's Minnesota writeoff on the occasion of Sinclair Lewis's birthday:

Lewisiana
NFP - Arrowsmith
Moses76 - Elmer Gantry (movie)
SM - The Man Who Knew Coolidge
SM - Dodsworth (movie)
SM- Cass Timberlane (movie)


Jiahong - Sauk Centre & Lewis Boyhood Home (retrospectively annexed)

Contributions about Other Minnesota/an Topics:

Skbreese - Absolute Zero by Chuck Logan
Drdevience - American Gay by my favorite Minnesota-born writer
Gaviidae - Bemidji Town and Country Club
MrsNormanMaine - Blood Simple by the Coen brothers
Macresarf1 - Fargo by the Coen brothers
Eplovejoy - The Jolly Green Giant byJack Greene
Quidrock - Ice Capades
Curtis_Edmonds - Nashville Skyline by Bob Dylan
EdGrover - Once Upon a Lake by Thelma Jones
Slarter - Necromancer by Gordon R. Dickson
Quidrock - Peace Like a River by Lief Enger
Popsrock - Pipestone National Monument
Pmills1210 - Purple Rain by and about Prince
Millinocket - A Simple Plan dir. by Sam Raimi
DrFreudine - Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
kamel622 - You Know You're a Minnesotan if... by Ed Fischer


Also see Stephen's earlier review of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Hyperlinks to these entries may be found at Murray's site:

http://www.epinions.com/user-stephen_murray





Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older