Mr. Lundegaard's in Jail
A truly arresting bit of imagery occurs early when we first see Jerry alone in his office at the car dealership. The scene occurs as a dissolve from Carl saying “total silence” in the car to a shot from outside Jerry’s office where he is on the phone. His office is surrounded by windows with vertical blinds and the camera is peeking into Jerry’s life from the other side of those open blinds so that they form merely vertical lines running from the top to the bottom of the screen. The imagery here situates Jerry’s life currently as one he feels increasingly trapped in as if it were a prison while also foreshadowing his eventual capture by the police and subsequent actual imprisonment.
Mrs. Lundegaard’s a Ghost
When she tries to make her escape from bathtub, the white shower curtain covers her entire body as she makes a run, giving the appearance of a ghost. She stumbles down the stairs and lies there unconscious as one of the kidnappers nudges her to see if she’s faking. From that moment on, Jean is a ghost: we learn nothing more about her, don’t hear her speak and never even see her face again. More to the point, the image foreshadows that she is already a ghost in the sense that she’s never going to come home again.
Television
Television is a persistent and pervasive presence throughout the film with nearly character shown engaging with it. When it is working and the picture is clear, it is an agency of soothing calm: the two kidnappers and their hookers are shown silently and passively in bed watching Johnny Carson right after a scene showing them engaged in loud and active sex in the same bed. Marge and her husband fall asleep while watching a documentary about beetles. More importantly, Jean Lundergaard is show silently and passively watching a morning infotainment program and then moving her head slightly to the left and remaining just as silent and passive as she watches a hooded kidnapper approach through the large glass windows as if they were the glass of her TV screen. Only when the window is broke and the kidnapper seems to step out of the TV and into real life does she begin to show emotion. This is contrasted with the little guy kidnapper showing the only emotional reaction to what is on TV in the whole movie and what is on TV is nothing but “snow” meaning that his emotional reaction is actually caused by what’s not on TV.
Communication
As is always the case in a Coen Brothers movie, dialogue should always be considered as part of the film’s imagery. The most common thematic thread connecting every Coen Brothers movie to another is that of the complexity of human communication. In Fargo this theme is manifested in a variety of ways. The upper Midwest dialectical patois (you betcha…yah…aw geez) is a source of humor while also working both to situate the film’s setting while making a postmodern ironic commentary about how geographical accents serve as sources of alienation and disconnection. The entire scene between Marge and her high school admirer is a case study in the complexities of human communication. Even the very brief shot of Marge shouting into Hardee’s drive-thru microphone to ask if anyone is there serves to underline how communication is imagery for the Coen Brothers.
