Fargo (4th series) is a 2020 Tv show broadcast on FX. The program adapts the sensibility of the Coen brothers 1996 film, although, nodding, as well to other pictures made by those directors. Joel and Ethan Coen are named as executive producers and their quirky perversity and stylistic tics are on display in the TV show. The movie Fargo, of course, was not set in that place but rather Bemidji and Minneapolis. Although the first three TV series, written by Joshua Hawley, were nominally set in Minnesota, although obviously filmed somewhere else -- for instance, the third series was shot mostly in the area around Calgary. -- the fourth iteration of the show abandons even the pretense of a Minnesota location. Fargo (IV) takes place in Kansas City. All of the episodes that I have seen in each of the four seasons involve sly references to Coen brothers' films, take place in snowy settings, and feature, at least, one character who speaks in the Scandinavian-influenced dialect that the Coen's imagine to be echt-Minnesotan -- this was the lingo spoken by the pregnant cop (and many others) in the original movie. The four series are all crime dramas involving various sorts of highly deviant families.. Plots are complex to the point of being sometimes unintelligible and the rationale for the shows is to highlight prestige actors playing flamboyantly eccentric characters and to stage periodic and showy massacres -- in keeping with series' inspiration, Fargo (I - IV) episodes have been uniformly very violent, often to the point of absurdity. An example is a machine gun battle at the Kansas City union terminal in Fargo (IV) -- two female bankrobbers have busted out of prison and stolen money from the one of the two gangs competing for control over the rackets in Kansas City. The women, an African-American and Native American, are cornered -- we understand them to be lesbian lovers. Seeing that they are trapped and doomed, the women blaze away at an army of cops swarming down the steps of the big Roman-imperial scaled train station (The imagery comes wholesale from Brian de Palma's The Untouchables). The show cuts away after the first fusillade. A few minutes later, we rejoin the action with the camera panning over a battlefield of about forty bloody corpses, including a dozen of so civilians, most women and children, caught in the crossfire. The whole thing defies probability and the scale of the carnage is ridiculously epic, particular for a show that faithfully recites an opening title from the original Coen brothers inspiration: "This Story is True."
Although the movie Fargo is the TV show's titular source, the FX program is most closely related to another Coen brother's picture, the extremely complex and ultra-violent Miller's Crossing, a film that, itself, harkens back to the long tradition of gangster movies made in this country, flavored it should be noted with a little seasoning from Japanese samurai pictures As with Miller's Crossing, the TV shows display a certain ostentatious pretense -- these shows are supposed to be about something deep, disturbing, and perdurable in the American psyche. The tag-line for Fargo (IV) is a showy aphorism: "The reason Americans like a crime story is that America is a crime story." This assertion, although it sounds good, really doesn't mean anything at all -- it's interpretation is in the eyes of the beholder and, as with the opening title assuring the audience that "This Story is True", in fact, the statement isn't true at all. To the extent that the aphorism suggests that important parts of American history involve greed, violence, and corruption, then, I suppose that the same could be said of every other country on earth.
Fargo (IV), which I'll call KC henceforth, broadly pivots around the concept of "fostering". In former times, peace was kept in certain violent societies, for instance, among Scandinavian and Germanic war lords, by exchanging children between feuding factions -- if the enemy is entrusted with raising a child from the enemy clan, then, a fragile sort of truce may hold between adversaries. The idea of raising the heir of an enemy clan as a foster-son is a kind of clammy peace overture that partakes in equal parts of kidnapping and holding hostages. In KC, this baroque tradition began with conflict between the local pioneer (Protestant) gangsters and Irish immigrants -- two children were exchanged to seal the peace. Italian gangsters then infiltrated the city and more turf wars arose -- by this time, the original pioneers had died out and the Irish controlled the crime in the City. Accordingly, an Irish lad was exchanged for an Italian kid and, again, a truce was negotiated. As of 1950 when KC takes placed, the Irish have now become largely middle class and no longer victims of protection rackets and, so, their gangs have faded out of sight, only to be supplanted by African-American organized crime. Once again, a Black boy is traded for an Italian kid -- the Black youth is raised in the home of the Capo of the Italian gangsters and an Italian lad goes to live with Black crime family. It's this relationship between warring gangs that results, at least, to some degree in the mayhem in KC. When the treaty collapses, both sides believe that the foster-children have been murdered. And, this leads to an all-out gang war.
A number of subplots are strung on this narrative scaffolding. A redheaded nurse from Minnesota works at a local hospital. She's a frightening psychopath and poisons a number of people in the show (she also smothers several of her patients). This woman embodies "Minnesota Nice" in a particularly lethal way -- she's perky and talks with the exaggerated Scandihoovian accent that the Coen brothers highlighted in their 1996 film and she's bedding the boss of the Italian crime family: she adds a little erotic asphyxiation to her sex games with the gangster. The Italian crime family has been radically destabilized by the appearance of a beefy thug from the old Country, a former Black Shirt Fascist now fled to Kansas City -- like the red-headed Minnesota girl, this guy is an insane psychopath. (This character, Gaetano, played lushly by Salvatore Esposito, rolls his eyes, directs unheard opera arias, and kills everyone he encounters, triggering a renewal of the war with Black gangsters -- Gaetano is extreme even by Coen brothers' standards, but he's also someone you can't take your eyes off.) Two female murderers who have escaped from prison are on the lam in KC -- they are pursued by a straight arrow Mormon detective (I can't recall why this fellow has been recruited from Utah) who also has psychopathic tendencies -- he's called "Deafy" because if someone curses around him or says something he doesn't like, he squinches up his face, cups a hand to his ear, and pretends not to have heard the offensive words spoken. This character is paired with an obsessive compulsive local detective who exhibits a whole range of elaborate tics and twitches. A local funeral parlor is operated by a biracial couple and they have perky highly intelligent daughter who spends her time dreaming in her room and listening to Edith Piaf records. The funeral parlor folks have run into money problems and have borrowed money from the Black mob, a very bad business decision, indeed. The undertaking establishment is called King 'o Tears, a formulation used in variants in each series and harkening back to the opening shot of Fargo (the movie) featuring an actual business in West Fargo, a bar called the King o' Clubs. There are several other subplots, including a series of poisonings in the hospital where the deadly redhead works. One of the people offed by the Minnesota nurse is the patriarch of the Italian crime family, a killing that initiates the cycle of violence.
The two lead characters are both cast against type. Jason Schwartzman, a small, unprepossessing man, plays the part of the Italian crime boss -- he accedes to power after the nurse kills his father who has been hospitalized under her care. Schwartzman is about half the size of Gaetano, his brother from the Old Country, and the bigger man beats him up periodically. Schwartzman is engaged in an extra-marital affair with the redheaded nurse who, unbeknownst to him, killed his father. His opposite number is Loy, played by Chris Rock. In my view, Rock isn't very good and the casting against type, in his case, is really better described as simply miscasting. Chris Rock's voice is too high and boyish to be menacing and he doesn't exude any of the manic energy that made him famous as a comedian -- he just seems weary. However, his character is supported by a number of authentically scary African-American thugs and so his gang is reasonably frightening even though the boss isn't. The show can be interestingly digressive and takes its time, a virtue, I think. The background is populated by weird happenings, including a corpse that seems to be trying to get out of a casket, and there's an odd black-and-white episode in which Ben Whishaw playing Rabbi, the Irish hostage held by the Italian gangsters, although now grown-up, tries to save his counterpart, the Black foster-child, by fleeing from Kansas City into the country. This episode parodies the Coen brothers's nightmare film Barton Fink involving a squalid hotel that may be the lobby to Hell, but also invokes the terrifying tornado in A Simple Man and with elements of The Wizard of Oz thrown in for a good measure. After a characteristically violent shoot-out, Rabbi is sucked up into the tornado.
In the final two episodes, lots of people are killed, although the motives for the assassinations are murky. Because various massacres and ambushes have left the forces of the original two gangs very thin on the ground, outsiders have been recruited to perpetuate the feue -- there's another group Black mobsters, somehow related to Loy, but working for the Italians. When they are rubbed-out, the Italians are reinforced by some sophisticated Big City criminals from New York City led by a suave and menacing capo of all capos. The perky teenager who lives in the imperiled mortuary figures out that the Minnesota nurse, Miss Mayflower, murdered the Italian crime boss, Jason Schwartman's father, the incident that has triggered the vendetta. (Miss Mayflower keeps souvenirs of her depredations and the girl has stolen the dead patriarch's pinky ring from the nurse's morbid collection.) The girl connives a meeting with Loy and exchanges the ring for the mortgage on her parent's undertaking business. Loy, in turn, meets with the Godfather from New York and negotiates a truce, demonstrating that his African-American mob didn't in fact kill the old man. By this time, Miss Mayflower is in jail, accused of a poisoning that her victim survived (albeit not for long -- the pompous hospital administrator and some other guy who I couldn't identify are summarily executed by Schwartzman's character.) The New York Godfather bails Miss Mayflower out of jail and she admits to killing the old man but at the behest of Schwartzman, his son -- she has interpreted his words "Take care of the Old Man," somewhat in the way that confederates of King Henry interpreted the ejaculation: "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" referring to Thomas Beckett. The New York mobsters take Miss Mayflower and Schwartzman's diminutive, if ruthless, gangster out in the country and kill them -- before she's shot, Miss Mayflower takes care to freshen-up her lipstick. Loy finds that the New York mob, with whom he has made peace, intend to take away half of his criminal enterprises. But he's resigned to that fact -- his son, thought to have been murdered while held as foster-child to the Italians, has returned home alive and there is rejoicing in his household. Just as Loy accepts the fact that peace will mean a reduction of his empire, someone out of the past knifes him to death. He dies as the son given up as a foster child watches. In a brief coda, probably ten years later, we see a car speeding across a featureless plain. The gangster's son is in the car -- at least, I think this is who we see -- playing with a loaded revolver. (He seems to be zooming into a previous year's series in which, I think, the Black assassin played an important role.) Along the way, one episode earlier, Gaetano dies -- the film establishes that the burly Italian is not too good on ice and has slipped and fallen several times, usually with lethal consequences to those who have had the temerity to laugh at him. Strutting back to his car from a murder (he has just killed the last lawman standing, the guy with the OCD), he again slips on the ice and, falling. his gun discharges, blowing off the top of his head and, therefore, justifying a big close up of his brains spilling out of his shattered skull.
Much of this is not comprehensible as it occurs in real time. I've suffered from insomnia and worked out a lot of this plot while staring sleeplessly into the dark -- at three a.m., when a man of my years should be saying his prayers. Many elements of the story are baffling when they occur -- you can't figure out who is killing who or why. The final murder (Loy) is committed by a character who has not been in the show for four episodes and was thought, at least as far I was concerned, to be long dead. (Fargo episodes are broadcast back to back, the same show running twice per night -- therefore, the assiduous viewer can sometimes figure out events at the end of the episode by watching for clues in the first ten minutes of the broadcast. In the case of Loy's murder, the final show begins with an elegiac sequence, a montage of all the cast members who have been butchered in the series appearing while Johnny Cash sings mournfully -- although you don't notice this on first viewing, the figure who kills Loy doesn't appear in the montage and, therefore, an ultra-alert viewer --the ideal viewer as it were -- would grasp that the assassin, contrary to what you recall, is somehow still alive. Although I was able to figure out who killed Loy, the murderer's motives, which she helpfully states, don't make sense -- it's revenge for a killing in which Loy wasn't involved as far as I can recall.) The show is too intricate and has too many characters to keep in mind -- and the format doesn't help: the show is broadcast in the old-fashioned way, one episode per week -- this time lapse is too long to keep events in mind between shows. Furthermore, the program is shamelessly chopped up by commercials. In the last episode, there seemed to be a long series of ads about every six minutes -- this also makes it difficult to retain what is supposed to be happening. Unlike incoherent messes like Westworld, Fargo does make sense and, in fact, its narrative can be worked-out -- furthermore, the show is well-written in the sense that plot developments are often signaled several episodes before and figures in the show act in a way congruent to their characters. The only part of the program that seemed hastily, and opportunistically, contrived is a subplot involving a demon slave-trader, a monstrous figure with a mutilated face who intervenes at one point to save a crucial character -- this ghostly apparition is visible from time to time in the background during scenes involving carnage but is not explained until a spooky story is told just before the specter has to recue someone from deadly peril. This element of the story isn't effective and feels tacked on.
Although my guess is that the writer isn't familiar with these sources, Fargo -- KC is very similar to the old Icelandic sagas, most particularly Burnt Njal. Icelandic sagas, at least, of the family history variety, involve clans with hair-trigger tempers always poised on the verge of murderous havoc. In these fantastically intricate stories, something goes wrong and a blood feud results. The problem with this kind of feud is that there is no way for the families involved to extricate themselves from the killing, the violence just continues for decades as a series of ambushes sometimes enlivened by large-scale skirmishes and massacres. In Icelandic saga, the story and cast of murderous Vikings regenerates when a new generation takes up the vendetta on behalf of their parents. Njal covers a genealogy of violence that spans, at least, four generations, with fathers passing vendetta obligations down to their sons and grandsons. (In Icelandic saga, the women are equally murderous, enthusiastically spurring the men into killing one another.) KC, fundamentally the saga-like chronicle of a blood feud, takes place in the scope of a single year -- therefore, the plot has to figure out a way to bring in new cannon fodder for the cycle of violence. This is accomplished by the plot expanding the scope of the feud to involve outside alliances with other groups of gangsters imported to continue the killing-- in KC, the Black Oklahoma gangsters and their counterparts, the New York mob, join the fray about midway through the show to keep up the violence. (In Burnt Njal, the hero is massacred with most of his family when his farmstead is attacked and set on fire -- this should be the end of the Saga, but, in fact, occurs at the mid-point in the story; the killing just continues, lovingly chronicled by the writer, for another couple of generations.) As with Icelandic saga, the tone adopted by filmmakers is Olympian indifference -- the follies of the actors in the vendetta are observed with casual contempt and, even, a sort of macabre and sardonic humor. In both Saga and Fargo, people die in all sorts of amusing ways, sometimes, by sheer accident or misidentification, and there is some supernatural intervention, although it is usually slight. As in the Icelandic books, the logic of blood feud is clear, if savage, the killing continues until everyone is dead -- hence, all the gangsters active in the violence have to be wiped-out before the show can end. Loy is the last man standing, but he's killed in the final five minutes of the show.
Another source relevant to the show is Paul Wellman's A Dynasty of Western Outlaws, a popular history published in 1966 demonstrating that "crime is contagious." Wellman traces the mobsters active in the 1930's back to the violence inflicted on the Middle Border (around Kansas City) by Quantrill's Raiders -- the point of the book is to show that killing begets more killing and that there is a direct lineage linking the attack on Lawrence, Kansas to Jesse James, the Dalton brothers, and ultimately killers like Pretty Boy Floyd. This theme, I think, explains the series' short coda, establishing that the murders in KC spill over into later generations of violence depicted in Fargo's earlier episodes.
No comments:
Post a Comment