Entertainment

‘Fargo’ Part 2: The Franchise Delivers Something Tarantino Never Could


The Coen brothers’ 1996 film “Fargo” was a cinematic original.

Certainly, it stems from certain antics the brothers have found during their studies — from “Blood Simple” (1984) — through gems like “raise Arizona” (1987) ), “Miller’s Crossing” (1990), “Barton Fink” (1991) and “The Hudsucker Proxy” (1994).

In fact, everything in “Fargo” can be traced back to their previous films. And everything the Coen brothers have created has been conceived and is the evolution of an undeniably cinematic signature that has grown and embellished ever since.

If both are diagnosed with a terminal illness, their coda could be, from “No Country for Old Men:

“I don’t want to push my chip forward and go out and come across something that I don’t understand. A man will have to put his soul in danger. He’ll have to say, “Okay, I’ll be part of this world.”

That is the end of this particular explanation. You must be ready to put your soul in danger. And that’s courtesy of author Cormac McCarthy, who wrote the book based on “Old Men.”

Everything else belongs to Ethan and Joel Coen.

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The FX TV series “Fargo” (which the brothers co-executive) has taken Coen’s favorites seriously — taking turns taking advantage of its bleak landscape and quirky humor while deepen the moral depths discovered within:

  • The good and the evil
  • Irrationality and meaning
  • Justice and mercy
  • Personal Free Will and Divine Providence

Seasons 1 & 2 recreate the kind of humor that is still the hallmark of Coen. The comedy leaves the Tarantino-esque grotesque with a simple humour without their modern connotations.

The performance of “Pulp Fiction” is so realistically hopeless that the Coens’ Jewish faith seems to have served as the basis for something more than the gallows humor that Tarantino never featured. .

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Where the Coens reserve the right to include miracles in a universe that cannot be explained except for the meaning of human life; Tarantino offers an effort towards the meaning that humans once wanted in a universe that is only too willing to clap when their hopes are reached.

Both universes offer opportunities for meaning and hope – but while the Coens leave the door open, Tarantino always closes it.

The difference in satisfaction is important here.

Tarantino’s world usually ends in Hell. The Coen Brothers’, though it’s never quite definitive – that being said – always leaves hope.

Part is tragedy, the other part is comic.

Seasons 3 and 4 of “Fargo” brought something admirable in the Coen universe. Season 3 continues what it seems like a stuntman — but delivers a sordid and dirty story and performances so flawless that the weird accents and familiar faces are soon forgotten. oblivion.

The preeminent feature of Season 3 (as a counterpart to FX’s Seasons 1 & 2) is its return to the innocence of the original film. It offers seemingly parallel stories – with and without paint – in a connected universe in which clumsy men (Ray/Emmit Stussy by Ewan McGregor) pit themselves against a capable woman and good (Carrie Coon’s Gloria Burgle).

It recalls the wits between Marge Gunderson (Francis McDormand) and Jerry Lundergaard (Willaim H. Macy), whose world is sucked into the underworld by his own bad choices, triggering every wish for a future. the good life he may have ever conceived.

And while it includes a connection to an underworld that is evil and larger than anything the principles can imagine (and is wonderfully portrayed by its principled devil, VM Vargis ( David Wheeler/Thewlis), it never succumbs and in the end, may even perpetuate it.

RELATED: ‘Fargo’ cop proves handsome guys are still important

Undoubtedly, the absurd and magical elements are further developed and deepened in Seasons 3 & 4 — including a visit to “The Big Lebowski’s” Bowling Alley (in Season 3) featuring an Angel-like soul of the Jews banishing wisdom from the past and the future.

Along with the repetition of plot devices from the original (a captured suspect flees through the window of a rundown motel and a protagonist is killed by accident with a piece of glass – there is a perhaps a fascination for Frear’s “The Grifters”.

Both installments mimic their originals and deepen our thinking about the universe they continue to explore.

Season 4, in a brilliant twist starring Chris Rock (as Loy Cannon), is both darker and deeper. The bleak winter landscape is maintained, but the universe turns from white to brown.

Not just because the African-American crime syndicate competes with the Italian model, but because the cinematic color scheme matches the variation in tone.

Season 4 takes place inside rather than outside, taking viewers back to the 1950s and offering a poignant storyline about the Fargo/Kansas City connection established in Season 2.

With only a single character, Wes Wrench (Russell Harvard) survived Seasons 1, 2, and 3 and safely established that the Coens insist on some elemental characters to ensure that some of the glory of justice prevailed, in the Faulknerian sense, over the bleak landscape they had established.

And while every movie and season represents some redeeming character from almost every race represented, Season 4 seems to be for the Italians—all the Machiavels, who only get dessert. their own — by accident or by design.

RELATED: How ‘Barton Fink’ Let The Coen Brothers Push Us To The Edge

Finally, “Fargo” has consistently explored the profound Augustinian question of the relationship between divine Providence and individual free will. While Augustine’s Autobiography and the City of God are clear explorations of this great question, “Fargo” is a question asked by lay people, in light of human stupidity and human behavior along with it. the beauty (well, beauty is not enough) of existence.

What does it all mean?

We are born and we die. In between, we make a series of choices, and these choices have consequences that weave into our experience the threads that make up our lives.

At the same time, our choices affect the lives of others, and their experiences are enlightened, enlightened, or tainted by our decisions.

“Fargo” (whether the original film or the series) suggests that we both control and not fully control those choices. Tornado raging. Earthquakes move the earth. Random characters come in and out of our lives — shuffling our death reels or warping ‘fortune’ in our direction.

Sometimes the consequences of our choices mean everything. Sometimes a Rabbi (“A Serious Man” of the Coens) rightly says, “Look at the parking lot…”

In other words, it means something, it means nothing. That’s the Jewish way. Or, it means everything.

In Season 3, the character VM Varga says, “The problem with the world is not the devil; it’s good.” This was the key to the world of the Coen brothers, and the FX line was right in that world.

It is a universe in which the irrational is allowed because the meaningful is the basis; it’s a universe in which tragedy is based on comedy, because the most meaningful things are not the murders in the graveyard but the lasagnas in the kitchen.

We, as humans, laugh and cry naturally, because a sense of proportion in everything is an instinct, not a learned thing. Every moment of right in “Fargo” is not learned, it is innate. Every moment of evil is taught. And every good moment is a choice and a grace.

Gregory Borse teaches film appreciation, history & development, philosophy, literary theory, and a variety of literature on the small campus of a large Southern university system. His short story “Joyellen” was selected as an online exclusive for the Summer 2021 issue of the West Trade Review. He has previously published or presented on Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” Stephen Frear’s “The Grifters,” and other horror films ranging from “Nosferatu” to “Halloween,” “The Silence of the Lambs” and “The Silence of the Lambs.” The Strangers”, among others.



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