Fargo vs Memories of Murder

Fargo

Marge's investigation is methodical, cheerful and accurate. She gets every step right: she identifies the car, traces the dealer and connects the crimes. The Coens make her so competent that the film's criminals look even more pathetic. She has no special brilliance to speak of. She pays attention, and that turns out to be enough.

Memories of Murder

The investigation is built from guesses and mistakes. The detectives piece together patterns, misread evidence and go after suspects who are innocent. The film spends as much time on their reasoning failing as on it working. I feel like the method of the investigation is the real subject of the film, more so than any solution.

Fargo

People discuss murder, kidnapping and getting rid of bodies in the same flat tone as restaurant orders and weather reports. Deadpan means saying outrageous things with a straight face, and the Coens' version has nothing cruel in it. It is how the film shows that evil is ordinary, dull and deeply stupid. Marge is competent and normal, and that threatens this kind of evil more than any dramatic showdown would.

Memories of Murder

Bong cuts between real horror and small-town slapstick. Detectives contaminate crime scenes, arrest the wrong people and fumble the paperwork, and all of it is played completely straight. The deadpan is an accurate picture of an institution running into something it has no way to handle.

Fargo

The film sets up 3 moral corners: Jerry's cowardice, Gaear's psychopathy and Marge's competent decency. The Coens make evil easy to understand. Jerry is small-minded and Gaear is aggressive, and you can read both of them completely. Because of that, Marge's goodness comes across as a choice she makes.

Memories of Murder

The film sets up 3 points of a moral triangle. Detective Park works by gut feeling and brutality. Detective Seo works by method and reason. Their prime suspect may or may not be guilty. The film never settles it. Neither approach works and neither detective is proven right. The weight lands on the system that failed, and far less on the people inside it.

Fargo

Minnesota's social world is flat, polite and deeply local, and the film uses it as the measure of right and wrong. It is hospitable, direct and unpretentious, and Jerry's scheme goes against all of that. Marge is what those values look like when they are working at their best. The film says they are enough to beat any clever criminal.

Memories of Murder

Rural Gyeonggi Province in 1986 is a place where the tools of an investigation barely exist. There is no profiling, and DNA tests have to be sent to the United States. The provincial setting decides which tools the detectives have. The limits of the place become the moral limits of the film.