Why I love Coen brothers movies so much.
I was watching "Raising Arizona" a couple of days ago, and it suddenly dawned on me why the Coen brothers are my favorite writers/directors.
If you look at a lot of their movies, a lot of their characters on the surface come off as folksy, unsophisticated and provincial caricatures.
But the writing is so rich that it creates a delicious dichotomy between what you would expect from the character and what they actually are saying.
They've pretty much perfected the Wise Simpleton.
In Raising Arizona, you have H.I., a trailer dwelling ex-Con who delivers this wonderfully rich narration with complex analogies and allusions.
In Fargo, you had the folksy small town Minnesota-nice Margie Gunderson, who singlehandedly puts together all the pieces of a complex kidnapping/murder case.
In The Big Lebowski, you have Walter, a Vietnam vet bowler with a serious temper problem who still manages to quote Lenin (but not Lennon), distinguish the subtle differences between Nazism and Nihilism, and take the time out mid-rant to correct the Dude's politically-incorrect reference of "Chinaman."
In O Brother Where Art Thou, you have escaped convict Ulysses Everett McGill, whose quick to deliver sharp and verbose statements to his two fellow escapees.
And there's other examples as well. But the style of wit meets regionalism makes them hands down my favorite filmmakers of all time.
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It's a mild spoiler, but anyone who hasn't seen the movie should read no further...
...Jerry Lundegaard's fate was perfectly executed.
I mean, if the cops shot him while trying to escape, or if he ACTUALLY escaped, it would have ruined the movie. What happened to him may have been "justice," but it is also the single worst thing that COULD have happened to him. All of his scheming and manipulation and attempt to stay ahead of the curve, BUT...
Love that and "Lebowski." Somewhat indifferent to "Arizona" and "Brother" after having seen both, but I HATED "Lebowski" on first viewing, so I may give the other two a chance some day.
Because the opening explanation is an untruth ("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"
. But, in the internet dawn of 1996, only a handful of critics decided to check whether such a crime had happened in Minnesota less than a decade earlier. So the myth that Fargo's brutally violent plot really did happen pervaded.
The Coens stuck to the story during the promotion of their film, too. In an interview with Premiere in March 1996, Joel is quoted saying: "we wanted to try something based on a real story, and tell it in a way that was very pared down", before adding that the script was "pretty close" to the actual event.
However, his brother Ethan revealed the truth behind the 'true story' in the introduction to Fargo's published screenplay, the closing sentence of which read: "[the film] aims to be both homey and exotic, and pretends to be true."
The closest Fargo's plotline ever got to real life was in 2001, when an office worker from Tokyo named Takako Konishi was found dead in a snowy field outside of Detroit Lakes in Minnesota. Her death was ruled as a suicide, after Konishi was found to have suffered depression from being fired from her job and found to have overdosed on sedatives.
(Warning! Major spoiler in the clip below! Watch only if you have no intention of seeing the movie 
No spoilers in this one
