bradley • is • here

Fargo feels like a dream in many ways; its colors are muted shades of grey bleeding into white, the interactions and dialogue are almost always in the uncanny just-not-quite-right range of realistic, and the events are heightened to the extreme (see wood chipper). Yet, it is a world and a group of characters that are achingly familiar. It is our world stripped to its most bare. It is a post-apocalyptic film set in Middle-America-In-The-Nineties. In Fargo, just as in Fargo, there are those who have fallen into themselves, those who yearn for something else, those who have become so discontented with their lives they lose all semblance of empathy, and yes, there are even those who are doing alright. 

 

The film spends a lot of time with its antagonists. In fact, we don’t meet our “hero”  until well into the movie. This works, in essence, to de-glorify them. We see their plans as they really are: half-thought. And we can follow their motivations: petty, selfish. But we also get to sit with them  — we see the innocuous conversations, the rehearsing and bickering — and we get really comfortable with their modus operandi, and in that we see their humanity. 

 

Fargo offers essentially no background on its characters, but especially not its antagonists. We don’t know the details of Jerry’s debt, nor how he approached Shep about the kidnapping. We don’t hear how Buscemi and Marlboro Man became acquainted. It’s not necessarily that this information doesn’t matter, instead, we are simply being directed to care about other things —  Why won’t Jerry just ask his Father In Law for some money? Why is Buscemi content to commit this crime for $40K? What is Marlboro Man’s whole deal? It is this interrogation of these characters that reveals something true about ourselves. How we can turn cruel, become overrun by greed and hedonism. These three characters in particular show the various ways a person can succumb to a specific kind of madness — a fatigue of the mundane. 

 

Beginning And Ending With Me

I want to begin with Buscemi. His character seems at first to fit the mold of a savvy criminal —  he is asking questions, he is calm under pressure, and generally self-assured — but as we see him more closely, his clumsiness and inattention to other people is revealed. He is, quite frankly, a bad criminal. He evidently doesn’t know how to use a crowbar and his pitiful bribe of a Highway patrol officer got him into the whole mess. But we also see what he’s after. He doesn’t need to be all that successful because what wants shouldn’t have to be bought. Buscemi is a man with a constant craving for attention and companionship. He repeatedly tries to talk to Marlboro Man without much success, he uses escorts to attempt to fill his other needs, and his blabbering to Local Minnesota Bartender eventually gets them caught. But something is stopping him from true connection. His attempts are so surface level it comes across as disingenuous. But he means it! He needs to be in it with someone. 

 

It’s not quite clear what that something is, but Buscemi feels like a representative of a collective desire for community without knowing quite how to get there. A selfish kernel remains deeply harbored that disallows full vulnerability. And one must be vulnerable to connect, there must be an exchange of trust and values. And Buscemi, in his way, offers at this. Upon discovering his $40k had turned into $1M, he still goes back to the cabin. Out of some feelings of loyalty or sentimentality, he gives Marlboro Man what he is owed. No, he does not share any tidbits about any extra money out there somewhere, but he didn’t have to return at all. And even still, what gets him killed was his inability to compromise even slightly by letting Marlboro Man have the car. A man $1M richer than his accomplice  just cannot budge. This is the difference. Buscemi has no ability to see beyond his own needs and for that, he got wood chip’d. 

 

Staring Into The Pit

Marlboro Man, you could say, is something of a closed book. And with such little given to us about him, any analysis is mostly conjecture. But that won’t stop me from theorizing. I think about the end of the film, when he is sitting in the back of a police car and asked why he’d killed all those people for just a little bit of money. I think about the look in his eyes — dead. Unlike his partner, it was never about the money. It’s hard to say exactly what he was after, besides a desire to exercise his bit of control over the world. 

 

There are two things we do know about Marlboro Man: he is quiet, he likes order. He ties up every loose end, sometimes literally eviscerating them, and definitely doesn’t like to feel slighted. Marlboro Man feels more self aware than most of the other characters. He can feel the absurdity around him and has reacted by closing himself off. He is driven by an impulse to maintain a world that is cold and heartless. He was not in it for the money. If he was in it for anything at all, it was as an excuse to keep the world as he saw it. At some point in his life he stopped responding and every deviation from his darkened perspective became an affront to his reality. 

 

Plain Pathetic Narcissism

Jerry may be the worst of them all. He comes from the same ilk as every dictator and commander with plausible deniability. He is a man so deeply unsatisfied and ashamed of himself, he has no qualms to pawn off his own wife. He is so disinterested in anyone but himself he forgets to tell his son his mom had been kidnapped. His motivations are clear and familiar; he feels intimidated by the success of his wife’s family, he feels stuck in his career and life, and he desperately wants to be a man of his own making. And to be that Self-Made Man, he will use anyone he needs to. 

 

Contrast Jerry with his wife, Jean. We don’t see much of her but what we do see is a charismatic, kind woman stuck taking care of her family without the help of her husband. There are two scenes I think that define her, and in comparison, define Jerry. The first is when the family is at dinner. Their son asks to leave so he can go to McDonalds to meet some friends. Permission is given by Jean, and she even overrules her crotchety, old-school father. And all the while Jerry sits silently, self-absorbed with the pitch he is preparing to give to his father-in-law. The second scene happens directly prior to her kidnapping. She is on the couch, knitting, while watching a program on TV. The two hosts are smilingly inviting the audience to come along on some exotic trip, or cruise. The details aren’t important, it’s the fantasy that matters for the prospective audience. And Jean, as a stay-at-home mom in a frictionless suburb, is the prime customer for instilling a sense of discomfort through options of vaguely better, yet ephemeral lives. We don’t know much about her before she is murdered off-screen. Is she happy to e a Good Suburban Wife? Does she get frustrated with Jerry’s apathy and uselessness? We aren’t shown. What we are shown is a woman who tried, who cared, and who, at the very last moments of normalcy in her life, smiled at the prospect of better places. 

 

Jerry’s story ended as he lived: pathetically. After abandoning his family, he is eventually caught by local police. Because he is not clever enough, lacks the imagination for anything better. His inability to even try to feign contentedness leads to the death of six people. It is a failure of constitution and a story of selfish treachery that can only be accomplished by someone let into the trust of a community and family. Jerry had every chance to be happy, but what he was after was poisonous. 

 

And It’s Such A Beautiful Day

So how do these scions of competence meet their end? Mostly by solid, textbook detective work. Enter our hero, Marge. Seven months pregnant, she systematically follows the leads until the suspects are caught. It’s not quite dispassionate, but the expected verve is not there. She does not take the murders personally — she has a job to do, and she’ll do it, but she has bigger concerns. That is the biggest separation from the other characters. She has a life and community that is deep enough to live on constantly in the background of her life. When every choice stops being life or death, life tends to happen anyway. 

 

Marge and Norm have fought off all the destructive forces that permeate the setting. They have no reckless ambition — they do their jobs, paint mediocre pictures of mallards, and come back to each other at the end of the day. The mechanics of their relationship happen automatically. They help each other on instinct, but remain secure in their own autonomy. And most importantly, they have avoided jaded nihilism and have built a home to be proud of. One that is cluttered and shining with personality. It’s not magical but it takes work. You must establish trust with the strangers around you and you must know what you wish to protect.

There are many ways to react to the world of Fargo, and all the easiest ones are destructive. It takes real concerted effort and empathy to build a life in the tundra; there will always be another storm to clear your progress. But the wrath and callousness can be buffeted by building Little Havens. Find the people with whom you feel safe and build out from there. It is not a call to shelter and remove, but a plea to dig roots and communicate. Become interested in your setting so when a good day comes, you can recognize it for what it is.