Fargo

How this film uses it

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.

Where to see it

Marge's investigative conversations. Every time she talks to a local witness, you see community, memory and care. The criminals only deal in transactions and can't copy any of that.

How this film uses it

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.

Where to see it

Marge's examination of the highway murder scene. She is professional, thorough and 7 months pregnant.

How this film uses it

The Coens cast the film so carefully that even the minor characters feel like complete people (the motel clerk, the parking lot attendant, the Minneapolis escort). The Minnesota accent is recorded faithfully and never mocked. As a matter of fact, the film's whole social world is built out of real, specific detail.

Where to see it

The witness interviews in Brainerd. Each local character is a full portrait of a person, and the casting makes the community feel like an actual place.

How this film uses it

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.

Where to see it

Marge's confrontation with Gaear at the lake. The 3-way contrast gets settled here. Decency and violence stand face to face, and there is no melodrama.

How this film uses it

Roger Deakins photographs the Minnesota winter as an unbroken field of white. Roads, fields and sky all merge into the same colorless stretch. People stand exposed against that blankness with nowhere to hide. They are cut off physically, and they are cut off morally too.

Where to see it

The wide shots of the kidnap car on the empty highway. Figures move through a white world with no cover. In that landscape, what they have done has nowhere to hide either.

How this film uses it

The film opens with Jerry towing a car through a white blizzard on his way to set up a crime. It closes with Marge in bed with Norm, talking about his duck stamp appearing on a 3-cent stamp. The ending is domestic and content, and it is so small next to all the carnage before it. That is what the film is saying. Ordinary goodness is its own reward, and it is answer enough to the greed that caused all the death.

Where to see it

The closing scene with Norm. Marge reassures him about his 3-cent stamp and they look ahead to the baby. By ending here, the film gives the last word to small things and decency.

How this film uses it

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.

Where to see it

Marge interviewing the escort girls. She asks simple questions and draws the right conclusions. Her detective work comes across as plain human attentiveness.