“THIS IS A TRUE STORY. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.”
Actually, it’s not. Fargo is not based on a true story. But since Fargo is about nothing if it it’s not about subverting audience expectations, it serves a great purpose. The irrefutable fact is that if audiences think a movie is based on a true story, they are willing to suspend their disbelief according. The title sets the stage for suspension of conventions.
“Yah, but the deal was, the car first, see, then the forty thousand, like as if it was the ransom.”
Here’s the plot. A seemingly decent guy named Jerry has contracted with two low-life thugs to abduct his wife for a fake kidnapping sort of deal. What could possibly go wrong?
“So, that was Mrs. Lundegaard on the floor in there. And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. And those three people in Brainerd. And for what? For a little bit of money? There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don'tcha know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well. I just don't understand it.”
Here’s the short version. What could wrong is five murders that Officer Gunderson knows about and a few others she doesn’t yet and the guy she’s talking to is one of the kidnappers and he didn’t even get his share of the forty thousand Jerry was talking about, but what neither her nor Marge knows is that his late accomplice double-crossed him and left buried in the snow along the highway one whole heckuva a lot more than a little bit of money. Still, her philosophy is the same; it just comes down to whether those lives were for a few thousand or a few hundred-thousand dollars.
“We're not horse-trading here, Wade, we just gotta bite the bullet on this thing.”
This quote is important because it is one of the examples of the pervasive reference to animals throughout the film. This state of reference becomes a symbolic motif calling attention to the inhumanity of so many of the film’s characters. Like, for instance, Wade who has just suggested offering the kidnappers half a million as a negotiating counteroffer to Jerry’s (who is in on it, remember) announcement that they want a million dollars for the return of…Wade’s daughter.
“You know what a disparity is?”
Disparity: an incongruence, an inconsistency, a lack of correspondence. Keep in mind that Fargo is about, above all else, subverting the conventions that audiences have been conditioned to expect. That subversion serves to create a disparity that forces audiences to think a little more deeply. And that’s why Jean asks this seemingly offbeat question of her son.
“Things have changed, circumstances, Jerry... force majeure, acts of God.”
Speaking of disparity. What kind of low-life kidnapper even knows the phrase “force majeure” much less would find occasion to use it so appropriately under such conditions? With the Coen Brothers, communication dissonance is to be expected. People talk in a way that they wouldn’t be expected specifically for the purpose of creating a disparity between what audiences expect and what they are given. The quote goes even deeper, however. The phrases Carl engages here—“force majeure, acts of God” are fairly specific to a certain type of discourse: that of contract negotiation. We have already seen Jerry, as a car salesman, actually engage force majeure against a customer when during the earlier TruCoat. Now he finds himself on the other end of being cheated in a negotiation.
“No. No. They never married. Mike's had psychiatric problems.”
Mike is Marge’s friend from high school she just had an awkward meal with that got even more awkward when he broke down crying after telling her his wife Linda—another name from high school—had recently died from leukemia. But a phone call to another old high school friend reveals that Linda isn't dead. And she wasn’t Mike's wife. And he got in trouble for stalking her. And this revelation about how even seemingly nice guys can have depths of duplicity stimulates Marge to go back and re-question Jerry who is kind of like Mike.
“There's the car! There's the car!”
In what may well be the single greatest example of subverting audience expectations as well as the single greatest example of disparity between what an audience expects and what it gets, Marge does not being the bad guys to justice as a result of movie-cop heroics or deductive reasoning. Her investigative trail is rock solid, make no mistake; Marge is a competent cop. But that investigative trail just happened through luck and good fortune to allow her to pass by the home where the car she’s been trying to track down just so happens to be parked where it is possible to see from the road. And she just happens to look over at the just the right time. She’s as shocked as the audience would be if this manner of catching the crook appeared in a Dirty Harry film or any cop show in the history of the American television.
