Fargo (1996)

Winner for Best Actress (Frances McDormand), Best Original Screenplay. Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Joel Coen), and Best Supporting Actor (William H. Macy).

A man makes a mistake. He makes a bad plan, and it backfires on him. He tells a lie to cover up his mistake. The lie is about to be discovered, so he comes up with another plan, makes another mistake, bigger than the one before. He tells another lie, comes up with another plan to cover his tracks, and so on. In a way, it is easy to see how Jerry Lundegaard (Macy) got in so far over his head in this film. I imagine that Lundegaard's original sin was fairly minor, but that is far behind him by the time the viewer meets him. When we meet Jerry, he is arranging the kidnapping of his wife in order to collect the bulk of the million dollar ransom for himself, paying the kidnappers a paltry $40,000 and a stolen car. He is arranging this, in part, in order to pay off over $300,000 in fraudulent financing monies for cars that don't actually exist. Where did that $300,000 go? Who knows? Gone to pay off his previous scheme, presumably. The plot, in terms of the criminal plan, is ludicrous. While you have to admire Lundegaard's chutzpah, it is criminally stupid to believe that you could get away with taking out loans on cars that don't exist. Especially if you're as bad a liar as Jerry Lundegaard is.

The plot, in terms of the story, is pure genius. I fell totally in love with this film from the first time that I saw the trailer. The screenplay not only richly deserved the Oscar that it won, but may actually be the best that the Coen Brothers have ever written - a bold statement, as the Coens are on my short list of the best filmmakers of this generation. In a film like this, the portrayal of ineptitude can be a very fine balance. Characters must behave in a manner that is inept enough to ensure the failure of their plans, but not so inept as to make it entirely unbelievable that they would even attempt to concoct such a scheme. Fargo walks this balance without a single misstep. It simultaneously walks a similar tightrope of balancing a very funny comedy with a brutally violent suspense film.

The performances are all top-shelf. A particularly underrated highlight to me is Harve Presnell, playing Lundegaard's millionaire father-in-law, a heartless, distant businessman. So shrewd a businessman is he that he feels the need to try to low-ball his daughter's kidnappers on their ransom demand. Frances McDormand, playing the pregnant police chief investigating a triple homicide that was an unfortunate side-effect of the kidnapping, delivers possibly the highlight performance of her career. But the real scene-stealer is William H. Macy, an actor I have always admired, who in this role masterfully plays one of the biggest low-lifes ever to grace the screen. His nomination here, for Best Supporting Actor, is one of those nominations that really makes me wonder how the Academy decides what is a lead role and what is supporting. I mean, not that McDormand doesn't deserve a lead actress award for this film, but she doesn't even make her first appearance on screen until 34 minutes into the film. Lundegaard, on the other hand, is present throughout the entire duration of the film. More importantly, his character is the driving force behind the entire story. The entire film is about his criminal plans, and the disastrous effects they have on everybody around him when they go wrong. How was he not a lead performer in this film?

Movie trivia question: One of only ten performers in Oscar history to be nominated for best lead and supporting performances in the same year, Jessica Lange was an Oscar darling in the 1980's, winning a Supporting Actress Oscar and being nominated for 4 Lead Actress Oscars during the decade. But it wasn't until almost halfway through the following decade that she finally took home a Best Actress statue. What was the film that finally got her the gold?