Fargo

Having not much to say about it, I liked Fargo. I can see why it's a classic, though it's not something that could affect me profoundly. All elements seem to align for a great and likable film. It's good for me to watch great films once in a while -- it's good for me to keep level in universal taste, not digging my ego deeper and deeper. I'm Thinking of Ending Things is the last thing I watched, which affected me intensely, but alienates me. It's good for me to survey sun-soaked land on occasion. Sun shines on Fargo, and many admiring eyes. I'm Thinking of Ending Things was cavernous. It depresses me when someone's favorite movies are all classics. When I hear about it, I feel acute relief I'm not that person.

Marge surprised me. With dim memory of the film I thought she would be primary heel of the parody -- but while she played along and was perhaps even centerpiece, she certainly wasn't heel, but hero. The Coens stitch a universe of drab duncery, leading viewers to conflate the two by repeated association: the drab and the dunce. The virtue is that when Marge enters she embodies form, yet defies the dunce to startling and heroic effect. She enters just like anyone else in the film -- with the most bumbling air. But when she hits the crime scene, she's immediately piecing things together correctly. Then I think the moment that sealed it for me was when she pitched the coffee. She's obviously a leg up on her town. Everyone sharp defected to corruption in the Cities. Later in the film she repeatedly rejects bullshit from all parties. Marge is the ideal individual manifestation of this culture -- wholly conforming, yet sticking up like a beacon. If she's a knife the first rays of dawn quicken to her edge, the first glint in the drab. But the crucial point is she's happy -- thoroughly happy. She's the loving-life version of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, the latter of whom clearly needs a Norm to fix him eggs and paint ducks. I guess the Midwest is a generally happy place. Whether a viewer finds Marge and Norm depressing or enviable is a razor's edge. Some ambition repels me from rural Midwest, and another draws me back. Unfortunately I don't think I could be happy with Marge's life -- but she's doing it perfectly right; she's exactly where she needs to be. That's why she's the ideal individual manifestation -- she's somehow settled in as the peak of what this could ever be. I call it enviable, and she's my unexpected hero.

Marge's arrest of the criminal at the end is perfect. The first shot misses, questioning whether she has the hand to catch him at all, like her humble air upon entrance in the film. The second shot is perfect, revealing she was going for moving legs, a much harder and calculated, dignified target. The first shot says she's real -- this isn't James Bond -- and the second shot says she's excellent and honorable.