Tuesday, May 03, 2005


Fargo poster Posted by Hello

153: Fargo

Fargo is a pretty quirky movie. It varys from extremely violent and bleak (disposing of bodies in a woodchipper, graphic cold blooded murder,belt whipping) to the banal and downright boring (Egg breakfast + car jump start, chatting about a painting competition, lots of overly drawn out conversations).

I think I see what the Coen brothers were going for contrast for black comedy effect. I'm no big fan of that particular genre by any stretch of the imagination but overall I like it. William H Macy and the ever excellent Steve 'motormouth' Buscemi are what do it though. They're really top notch performances. Buscemi eats up any screen time given to him. Hell, you could have made an entire movie with just him and his partner in crime with a continuous buscemi monologue and it'd be fantastic..

The look of the movie is pretty iconic. You really get the sense fargo is in the middle of nowhere. It times though its a bit arty, prolonged shots with no real action going on. I think that between the overly drawn out 'normality' conversations and the long camera shots you could cut a good 20 minutes off the movie and not really
harm it.

I'm not gonna rush out and see it again but I can see its merit.