Movie Review: Fargo and Blood Simple

The following article was written as an assignment for the Introduction to Film and Video Analysis class.

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The Coen brothers often make films that are categorized into crime movies. The genre includes the elements such as crimes, guns, murders, police, fights, violence, "good guys," and "bad guys." Miller's Crossing (1990), The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), No Country for Old Men (2007), and some other Coen's films have a lot of these elements. Strong influences by the hard-boiled novels of Raymond Chandler are seen in their films. Among them, Fargo (1996) received two Academy Awards (best actress and writing original screenplay) and a Cannes Film Festival Award (best director) and is considered one of their best movies. It has very unique characteristics, among which may even change the notion of the categorized genre as a crime movie. By comparing their first film Blood Simple (1984), its uniqueness becomes much clearer. Fargo seems to follow the rules of crime movies on the surface, but its motif and composition are quite out of them that allow this movie to be seen as an anti-crime movie in some points.

There are many similar points in both Blood Simple and Fargo regarding their plots, scenes, characters, and motifs. For example, one of the main male characters in both movies makes an initial crime plan involving his own wife and asks other person(s) with money to carry it out (A man asks a private detective to kill his wife in Blood Simple, whereas a man asks two thugs to kidnap his wife in Fargo). In both films, The original plans do not go well as planned, and the stories unfold unexpectedly. The husbands get in trouble and the other people around them also get involved. At last many of them are killed. All the events also happen within a few days in both movies. There are many similar scenes as well. They both have many long shots of a long road to the horizon on the plain field. Both first scenes are the long-distance shot of a long, empty road. Important negotiations are held in a bar. The couples in both movies find themselves safe when they are in bed with their partners. Sex scenes appear quite early in parts of both movies. Female characters try to escape to the bathroom at their houses and the attacker(s) breaks in there. While one of the characters is moving a dead (or dying) body in the middle of a street to the roadside at night, a car is approaching them. All the characters in both movies move to different locations by car and also many important conversations are held in there. In both films, female characters play quite a tough role such as shooting villain(s) and managing to survive. Same kinds of props including telephones and guns are also often used as an important tool. Strong similarity is also found in both characters. For example, the main characters in both movies are all middle-aged. The murderers are motivated by money to carry out the plans and end up dead (In Fargo, one of the criminals is arrested alive while the other one is killed). Most of all, both movies have very similar motifs. The intention and desire of each character causes unexpected results by accidents and leads the story to an unintended direction. These unexpected plot twists are one of the strong characteristics of the Coen brothers' films. This failing-crime plot is often seen in their other movies including Raising Arizona (1987), The Big Lebowski (1998), and Burn After Reading (2008). All the similarities mentioned above suggest that they are apparently pretty much the same kind of crime movies.

However, Blood Simple and Fargo still have different characteristics as well in characters, scenes, and plots. Blood Simple focuses only on the characters who actually get involved in the plan, whereas Fargo focuses not only on the characters got involved in the plan, but also on a police officer and her colleagues and family in the same town. Blood Simple follows the basic rules of film noir (guns, murders, money, femme fatale, and dark night), whereas Fargo is not restricted by these rules. It actually deviates from them and has very opposite characteristics to them: The police officer is not a macho or cool man but a middle-aged, cheerful pregnant woman. There is no femme fatale and no one is driven to commit a crime by sexual desire.  Blood Simple has many thrilling scenes. For example,  a camera only shows a female character hiding in the bathroom and does not reveal to the audience who the approaching attacker is in the living room. The sounds of the attacker's footsteps and the heartbeats of the female character also emphasize the thrilling mood. In contrast, Fargo has very few such scenes. Instead, it rather provides a comical touch to the violent scenes. For example, a female character fall off from the stairs blinding herself with a shower curtain and faints. This is one of the reasons why this movie is seen as dark comedy. Blood Simple consists of only a crime story, whereas Fargo consists of both a crime story and the ordinary-life story of a local police chief, Marge. There are many contrasting scenes as well. While darkness is very much emphasized in Blood Simple, the whiteness of snow in a day time is put much emphasis in Fargo. The climates in both movies are also opposite. Sweat on the character's face and flies flying around him show that the event happens in very hot summer in Blood Simple. On the other hand, white breaths from the mouths and heavy clothes with thick gloves show that the temperature is extremely low in cold winter in Fargo. Although one character wears a cowboy hat and another cowboy boots, the movie does not seem to represent the taste of Texas much in Blood Simple (The characters do not speak in heavy Texas accents), whereas strong Minnesota accents and the repeated dialects such as "yah" spoken in almost every character in a small local town Brainerd show the strong locality of Minnesota in Fargo. All the protagonists are desperate to find their ways out and do not morally reflect on what they are doing in Blood Simple, whereas the police chief Marge gives simple but strong moral questions at the end of the film to one of the arrested criminals Gaear regarding what he has done in Fargo. ("There's more to life than money, you know … Don't you know that?")

The ways the characters are depicted are also very different in both movies. All the characters are depicted quite seriously, and some are even depressed in Blood Simple. However, they are not heavily characterized with repeated actions or phrases. Especially the two main characters, Abby and Ray, are depicted as plain characters so that the viewers are easy to relate with them and imagine how they feel. In fact, there are many close-up scenes of them without saying anything, which may force the audience to guess what they are thinking. In Fargo, all the characters, including the very minor ones, seem a little comical to the audience even though they act seriously in the film. One of the main reasons for this is that each character bears caricatured traits which leave the viewers the strong impression of them and make the viewers easy to expect what the character will do and say next time when he or she appears on the screen. The characters' characteristic signs repeatedly occur again and again to the same characters throughout the movie in the forms of the actions, phrases, and facial expressions and form his or her unique characteristics. In other words, the characters are dominated by their own characteristics and do not act or say anything against their characterized images any more. The characters act and say as they are expected, which may lead the viewers to see them as a stereotypes with no complex human emotion.

The other reason for the comical aspect is that all the characters in Brainerd speak in very heavy regional accents and say colloquial dialects quite often as mentioned above. This also helps the viewers regard them as "characterized others" instead of seeing them as "ordinary people like us" just like the viewers themselves. This regional characteristic plays another important role in forming the perception of the characters. The viewers would notice that these Minnesotans act and say things quite politely. This politeness of the people in Minnesota is known as "Minnesota Nice." They also act politely even when they are in the middle of dangerous or desperate situations, which make the scenes funny even though they are quite serious. These contrasting points in both films make the very different impressions. Blood Simple keeps the thrilling tension, while Fargo has a relaxed, little comical atmosphere even though the events are very dreadful. Some other Coens' movies such as Big Libowski and Burn After Reading also have the same kind of comical atmosphere.

One of the most different points of Blood Simple and Fargo is the composition of their story lines. There are two on-going stories in Fargo, whereas only a single story line going on in Blood Simple. Fargo is not only about the story of criminals but also about that of ordinary people. These two stories are clearly contrasted as a whole to make a good balance of the movie tone not to become too criminally oriented. Marge's business and private lives are depicted in detail (they are actually mixed). By contrasting with the routine work and boring life in countryside, the movie successfully reveals the craziness of the other on-going kidnapping and its relevant events without much centering and dramatizing the violent event itself. Fargo finishes with the scene that Marge's husband Norm tells her that his picture was selected as the design for a postage stamp. It suggests that even right after a very dramatic and violent event such as shooting and arresting a murderer, a very personal event which looks very minor for many people becomes very important and exciting for a couple like them. For Marge, fighting with "bad guys" is not the exciting main event as the viewers expect. For her, it is just a routine work that should be done as usual as a part of her job. In other words, this movie rejects the core characteristic of crime movies such as "Who wins at last?" Instead, it suggests that there are many important things than beating bad guys. It gives an alternative value to the viewers at the end. In this sense, Fargo can be seen as an anti-crime movie. What Marge says in the police car to Gaear ("… and it's a beautiful day.") at the end of the movie shows that she is now back to her ordinary life again. The same composition and motif are also seen in No Country for Old Men that has parallel (criminals and police) story lines going on at the same time and makes a similar tone at the end of the movie.

Though there are many similar points in Fargo and Blood Simple, Fargo is more complex in composition and leaves the viewers a different impression at last from what it is expected as a crime movie. In a word, Blood Simple shows only the chain of violence, whereas Fargo shows how the violence and crimes look ridiculous and comical when it is compared with the peacefulness of caricatured ordinary people.