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Topic	B8 Movie Club Topic 2 - Into the Little Shop of Fargo Willy's Machete Wonderland
Seginustemple 02/19/21 10:41:49 PM #73:	Fargo I'm a Coens fan so this is the first movie I got to re-watch for this club. Bonus! A couple things stood out to me this time. First was how the icy winter setting presents a visual inversion of noir (a genre they love playing with), it's 'film blanche' so to speak. The iconic poster of the body face-down in a pure white landscape exemplifies this. Secondly is how the region is specifically back-grounded by Nordic heritage. Most of characters' surnames (Lundegaard, Gunderson, Gustafson, Grimsrud) are explicitly of that region, even the fake name Jerry gave the hotel at the end (Andersen) has Nordic connotations - of course it should be noted that according to the movie's 'true story' disclaimer all of the characters names are indeed fake in order to protect identity. But they are region-accurate, this Nordic heritage is where the Minnesota accent comes from. And I don'tcha know enough about Norse mythology to recognize if there are any larger storytelling connections to be made, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Coens were keen on that angle too (maybe not as overtly as O, Brother's allusions to The Odyssey but along those lines). I haven't seen the series on FX yet so I'm curious to see if they delve into that stuff more. Several of the Coen films' favorite subjects are here - kidnappings and ransoms, briefcases of money, hitmen, larger-than-life villains - Peter Stormare has tough competition in this category but his nostril-smoking dead-eye performance might be the creepiest behind Bardem in NCFOM. Macy is really creepy too, and I think it works that we don't get a reason for his character needing money beyond simple greed, no initial justification of needing to pay for cancer treatment or something. It hardly matters when his scheme revolves around traumatizing his family for it. MacDormand shines as the story's beacon of light, and her character embodies an inverted noir trope by running counter to all the grim hard-boiled detectives with nihilistic voice-overs. Admittedly I still don't know what to make of the Yamagita character. I've read different takes, some think he's just to provide a sense of realism because his scene is so random, which feeds into the 'based on a true story' teasing. Sounds plausible, I'm more persuaded by the reading that his erratic behavior indirectly makes Marge more suspicious of Jerry's. The scenes are back-to-back so there's a logic to that...although I still don't get why Marge couldn't just directly be suspicious of Jerry to begin with. This isn't my favorite Coen flick but that's okay because they have a lot of good ones. 9/10 --- You bow to no one, azuarc <cite>Seginustemple posted [p:950859193] in B8 Movie C... [t:79291002]...</cite> <quote>Fargo I'm a Coens fan so this is the first movie I got to re-watch for this club. Bonus! A couple things stood out to me this time. First was how the icy winter setting presents a visual inversion of noir (a genre they love playing with), it's 'film blanche' so to speak. The iconic poster of the body face-down in a pure white landscape exemplifies this. Secondly is how the region is specifically back-grounded by Nordic heritage. Most of characters' surnames (Lundegaard, Gunderson, Gustafson, Grimsrud) are explicitly of that region, even the fake name Jerry gave the hotel at the end (Andersen) has Nordic connotations - of course it should be noted that according to the movie's 'true story' disclaimer all of the characters names are indeed fake in order to protect identity. But they are region-accurate, this Nordic heritage is where the Minnesota accent comes from. And I don'tcha know enough about Norse mythology to recognize if there are any larger storytelling connections to be made, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Coens were keen on that angle too (maybe not as overtly as O, Brother's allusions to The Odyssey but along those lines). I haven't seen the series on FX yet so I'm curious to see if they delve into that stuff more. Several of the Coen films' favorite subjects are here - kidnappings and ransoms, briefcases of money, hitmen, larger-than-life villains - Peter Stormare has tough competition in this category but his nostril-smoking dead-eye performance might be the creepiest behind Bardem in NCFOM. Macy is really creepy too, and I think it works that we don't get a reason for his character needing money beyond simple greed, no initial justification of needing to pay for cancer treatment or something. It hardly matters when his scheme revolves around traumatizing his family for it. MacDormand shines as the story's beacon of light, and her character embodies an inverted noir trope by running counter to all the grim hard-boiled detectives with nihilistic voice-overs. Admittedly I still don't know what to make of the Yamagita character. I've read different takes, some think he's just to provide a sense of realism because his scene is so random, which feeds into the 'based on a true story' teasing. Sounds plausible, I'm more persuaded by the reading that his erratic behavior indirectly makes Marge more suspicious of Jerry's. The scenes are back-to-back so there's a logic to that...although I still don't get why Marge couldn't just directly be suspicious of Jerry to begin with. This isn't my favorite Coen flick but that's okay because they have a lot of good ones. 9/10 --- You bow to no one, azuarc</quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
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