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Fargo Reaction! (Patreon)

Published:
2024-06-01 14:00:12
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Files

Fargo (1996) - Sesskasays

Download Edit (3.9 GB) Edited Reaction Alongside the regular multi-part full, you now have the option of watching an edited version of the full movie reaction with 10-15mins of Picture-in-Picture. You can watch this edit

Comments

Jenny Chalek

It's so funny that they start it with that TRUE STORY nonsense. They later admitted they just put that there for effect.

Thomas Corp

It is most lovely to see that you found this film as wonderful as you did, Jess. My favorite film of 1996. It tends to be one of the popular picks when people say what their favorite Coen Brothers film is. I have it in my top three of their work myself. Siskel and Ebert gave two thumbs up, and it was named the best of the year by both esteemed gentlemen, the ninth and final occasion that it happened. Roger Ebert famously saying it was a movie that reminds us why we love movies, and Gene Siskel famously saying it was the last great film he saw prior to his death in 1999. I caught snippets of this around middle school and finally saw the whole thing around my senior year of high school. Start with the star of the show. The character that’s viewed as the best heroic protagonist of the Coen brothers’ oeuvre, Margie. Frances McDormand SO rightfully earned the first of her three best actress Oscar wins for this. I knew you’d be so taken with Frances being so wonderful as Margie. And I definitely knew that you would love all of the scenes of Margie and Norm, John Carroll Lynch is an underrated talent. Seeing and hearing you express love for Margie and Norm and how sweet they are warmed the heart, Jess. Nice to hear you quite like William H. Macy, who earned an Oscar nomination for Jerry. You summarize it so well that he is such a selfishly motivated character and never quite conceived how badly things would go. Jean did indeed pick a shitty-ass husband as you so perfectly described. I suspected you’d like Jean, and it was sad to see your expression when you saw that she was killed. I’m with you on feeling sorry for Scotty. Credit to William for his portrayal of the pathetic, spineless rodent that is Jerry. Like you mention, he excels at those types of characters such as his character in Shameless, who has good taste in beer, I’ll tell you that much. It is cathartic when he’s arrested, like you observe, is probably more upset that he got caught as he squeals like a pig being led to the abattoir. Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare are villainously marvelous as Carl Showalter and Gaear Grimsrud. I love how the Coen brothers craft such striking villains. Your reactions to their villainy was worth every penny. You called it madness. As Tywin Lannister once said, “Madness. Madness and stupidity.” A sentiment that succinctly sums up most of the characters in the Coen brothers’ filmography. I’m so glad that you did not know about the woodchipper as that tends to be well known even if one hasn’t seen the film. Your reaction to that, followed by Margie shooting Grimsrud, arresting him, and giving her big speech, was magnificent. You bring up what my brother often says that Showalter gets hung up on splitting the money for the car, when he’s got the briefcase to go to. I assume the stress and blood loss got to him. More, it ties into the theme of greed, as Margie says, “And for what? For a little bit of money.” You have the perfect description of this dark, amoral, criminal underbelly is glossed over by the veneer of American Midwestern politeness and charm. Indeed, some grim things happened. Yet in the end, Margie comes home to Norm, they have that quiet and intimate moment, and look forward to the birth of their child. Such a perfect sweet little ending that’s enough to make a grown man cry, and I love that you loved it too, Jess.

Thomas Corp

Talk about a few other things. I love that you loved the accents and the setting. You asked about the accuracy. I’m an Illinois man, born and bred. This takes place in Minnesota, but there is that shared midwestern feel. My accent’s different, think Nick Offerman or Johns Barrowman or Malkovich for frame of reference. I love your observations about Carter Burwell’s outstanding score, which yes, the theme is used in the show Fargo. You mentioned recalling the theme either from the show and/or because you listen to plenty of film score playlists, could be both. Likewise, Roger Deakins, as always creates the strong visual immersion with this movie as he does in everything he photographs, which includes the majority of the Coen brothers’ films. Loved your shout out to the visuals. The drinking game of take a shot every time someone says, “Aw, jeez” is a particularly deadly drinking game, and I did not partake. Amusingly enough, it’s not even the most fatal drinking game you could partake in whilst watching a Coen brothers film. I did know that you’d appreciate the brevity of the film. In rewatching it for your reaction, it caught me off guard how fast it went by, yet it never feels rushed. And I want to give you a round of applause for catching the significance of the Mike Yanagita scene as most people miss that, or it takes them a few viewings to catch the significance. Going back to Siskel and Ebert. In his great movies review of the film, Roger Ebert highlighted the scene, calling it “a scene many viewers find inexplicable.” and he wrote, “The critic Jonathan Rosenbaum says it's “a disturbing interlude that strikes many others as wrong or dubious,” but he finds it a key: “in terms of theme; a lonely individual lying compulsively, trying without success to hide his desperation it registers as central.” I agree. I think Mike works as a mirror of Jerry.” It is therefore a delight to me to see the manner in which you deduced the narrative purpose of the scene and how you summarized it. It’s not surprising to me that you caught it as you did, because you truly do have such a sharp and keen mind, Jess. Even so, just to see you work that scene out was a wonderful experience in this reaction. Just as this whole reaction was beyond wonderful, as were the other films in this reaction series. I now greatly look forward to the next series where we go back a decade. Until then, thank you for the reaction to Fargo, and thank you for the other delightful movie reactions these past few months. They were all so terrific.

Ryan

I mentioned before that you never know when the Coen Brothers will completely disregard typical storytelling rules, and in this case they make you wait a half-hour to meet the main protagonist (and top-billed actor). Luckily, until then we still get a bunch of quality actors who all think they're the main character but none are as smart as they think they are. And most fun of all is the greatest sad-sack actor who ever lived, William H. Macy, who has a bit of a tricky task here but fully makes Jerry Lundegard a blast to watch even as you eagerly await his comeuppance. I've never met anyone who doesn't absolutely love him, and I don't ever care to (I was already loving Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, but it reached a whole new level when he suddenly pops up as exactly what you'd expect Jerry to be getting up to in the post-apocalypse). So after all that, it's quite a relief to get such an instantly engaging character as Marge Gunderson to be our real hero, with Frances McDormand and John Carol Lynch as one of the most instantly believable and lived-in portrayals of a married couple in movie history. I was nodding along every time you couldn't help getting wrapped up in their dynamic. McDormand is among the few actors to have three Oscars, and this role instantly marked her as a big star to watch. The infamous woodchipper scene is part of a running gag with the Coens where not only does Steve Buscemi always die, but there's less of his body left each time. You've already seen the final part where he's cremated in The Big Lebowski. And honestly, even if he'd made it out, was he really expecting to find the briefcase again just with that tiny handle at such a distance as he's driving past? Well, he does mention he'd been up for 36 hours. A lot of people still name this as the Coens' greatest movie. I go for Miller's Crossing myself, but anyone who does certainly has good taste.

Ryan

Regarding the Fargo TV series: it's actually in the same continuity with the film and among other things reveals what ultimately happened to the money (in the first season, so I'd say that doesn't count as a spoiler). And it's most notable for its structure, which I can't really think of any other examples of in TV history. Each season is technically a standalone story that makes sense in isolation, but they're all still in the same setting and feature some characters between them, and taken together create a much richer experience telling the story of this one area across nearly a century, with all kinds of thematic meaning. Definitely don't take this as any kind of reaction request (I've learned my lesson elsewhere about never doing that unprompted) but for anyone here I'd certainly recommend checking it out.

Ziro the Hutt

You come from New York Jess, or did you just live there a while? I take it, it was outside of NYC? As you don't sound like Cid in Bad Batch! :D I take it then that even in same states over there, that there is multiple accents across in them, like we have here in the UK on a much smaller scale? I've only ever been to the USA once, back before even this film was made - in 1993 for the Indy 500, which I was big on back then (actually watched the race this year coincidentally for the first time since the 2000's), but found the people lovely and helpful overall, and we got the "have a nice day" goodbye. Facade or not it brightened us up on hearing it (do people still do that?). Over here we are much more understated, but though I myself am a misanthrope, we here in Scotland seem to have a decent reputation as being hospitable to people and tourists alike; though of course everywhere has exceptions. Accents can falsely give impressions about people, which we see in this film, where Marge comes across on first listen, as a bit simple, though she is anything but as we then see as soon as she starts analysing the first crimescene. I believe this is a stereotype that others place on people from places like the northern states and probably into Canada as well. We have that here too where people from my city are classed as coarse for the way they speak, whereas in Edinburgh people are deemed more refined. It happens down south in England too, where the people in the north there, are deemed to be ne'er-do-wells, and those in London are cultured - when its often the reverse. I love listening to different accents though, and those from the US I like to listen to are the southerners with their drawl thats quite similar to us here in Scotland the way we pronounce some of our words; those from NYC just because its a no-nonsense accent along with its variations depending on demographic, and the Texan accents are cool too. From what I hear too, Americans have very good diction and far better than many of us here in the UK. I sometimes have to put on my "posh" voice so people whom I've never met, or when I'm in public and have to be on my best behaviour, else many won't seemingly understand me, but then again people are losing their ability to listen to others. My sister tries to sound posher than she is a lot of the time, but I call her up on it as she shouldn't be ashamed of her accent, and I think subconsciously, she is. Either that or I don't care how I sound to most! :D I'm rambling on. I did have a few drinks watching this, forgive me! I'll talk about the film in my next post.

Ziro the Hutt

Its been a while since I've seen this, but its every bit as good as I remember, and I should watch the tv series, as it seems to be pretty good according to most. The pacing and composition of the shots in the film, is fantastic. On the pacing, it starts off pretty slow and allows our characters and these fine actors, time to breathe and take situation of the mad plot for all this. As it goes on, it picks up as the insanity and violence ramp up. William H. Macy is fabulous, as this weak-willed milksop of a man, who has come up with a crazy scheme and gets in over his head from the start. He's lower than the belly of a worm, as he tries to con all around him, and it never works! He's a terrible person, but a fantastic character to watch in every scene. Steve Buscemi is always terrific too and he is on top form here, as this incompetent villain who can't charm his way out of situations, so gets frustrated every time, and unravels more and more as their crimes ramp up. Peter Stormare always plays a creepy fella, and you can see even from the opening scenes, that he's going to be trouble. I agree on the music Jess. I too listen to soundtracks and tv music mostly these days, and this film has a fine score which adds to the silliness, but ultimately tragic story as things start to go wrong almost immediately. Composer Carter Burtwell surpasses himself with Miller's Crossing; but this score is right up there with that. It takes a while for Marge to come into the story, but its worth it when she does. And she and her husband (though I can never trust that actor since Zodiac where he is terrifying) are immediately warm and loveable from the off, which indeed does show a comparison with Jerry and his actions toward his wife and family. Frances McDormand won her first Oscar for this I believe, and she is phenomenal - as usual - here. Cate Blanchett for me is the best actor in the world, but Frances is certainly right up there also. As the madness ramps up, there is times where its equally hilarious and violent. Steve Buscemi balances both well as this frustrated crook who is quick to anger, to his own detriment most of the time, and gets a satisfactory, if rather brutal ending and disposal! As Jerry begins to lose it too, you can feel the weight of all those poor decisions he's made to get to this point, and you can't feel sorry for him when he becomes hysterical when arrested. When the ending comes, you can't help but feel all this was inevitable and yet pointless, and Marge is us in that scene when she has the psychotic Gaear Grimsrud arrested in her car. We see that he is completely apathetic to the situation and that it was all for nothing. A wonderful film, and glad to see how much you enjoyed it Jess; its definitely one of the best films of the 90's.