Meinen Thoughts on Fargo the Movie

 

It's about men. 

Men and their hopeless situation. 

The only 'good', sane man is Marge's husband, who paints stamps while his police chief wife solves a triple homicide, confronts the coldest killer face to face while seven months pregnant, and pieces together the puzzle as easily as if she were reading the script. He's the only man in the film who loves his wife, and in turn he has a burgeoning family, and is sane and normal in this world surrounded by senseless murder. Even his name is Norm. He's the norm, the ideal. But he paints stamps that are worth .03$, brings his wife lunch and dabs her cheek. Even at the end he doesn't mention the murders. He's unaware of those realities. He talks about stamps. He's also balding, even though his (not very young) wife is about to give new life.

Jerry doesn't love his wife or even remember that he has a son. The money is  mostly irrelevant to explaining his motivations. He's in want of less than a year's salary of money, so he throws away his wife. Even to the thieves the money seems secondary, or at least to Gaear, who kills so easily and fashions himself after Paul Bunyan with his axe as if he found a god in this world. As far as women go, they two only fuck prostitutes. 

Through the love of his wife Norm is afforded an island of warmth in this cold winter world, while the rest are thrown to the careless elements, where they unravel and lose their minds, or rather, are at the mercy of the edge. But Norm seemingly makes a trade off to enjoy sanity and warmth.

Mike Yanagita I don't quite get. He has no love of women but is in want, and at the same time is losing his mind, living with his parents, taking semi-crazy risks and spreading wild lies. He cannot get reprieve from this world, which he so desperately seeks.

Wade is successful, but even with all his money he is utterly lost and powerless in the world and rules of the men of the wilderness because money is secondary to the relationship between man and this world. Being a man adapted to the same world Norm is, his valuation of things is not on the same playing field as Carl's, and so he cannot reason with him and despite the protection of his money ends up one of the senseless murders.

Now I've overthought it. I wish I hadn't pulled back the curtain.

I can't fix him.

This is not a cohesive analysis, just some reflections stopping short of when the analysis becomes too cumbersome. But the analyses that talk about 'morality' and 'the nature of evil' and 'the disappearance of freedom' don't feel satisfying and I think it's because they don't really get to the heart of the matter. Probably cause the analyzers are a bunch of Norms. This thread works for me because otherwise it doesn't make much sense and you can get into meaningless abstractions. It's still only one lens. Mostly it hinges on considering (and properly valuing) Norm's lifestyle, and the fact that the ransom doesn't match the actions of Jerry and Gaear at all.