How Far­go bril­liant­ly blurs the line between fact and fiction

‘Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exact­ly as it occurred’. Few are the promis­es in cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry that raise hairs and moist­en palms as much as an asser­tion of com­plete fact, that what is incom­ing is God’s truth and you can take that to the bank, buster. In 1996, the Coen broth­ers made just such a promise in sim­ple white font on a black title card, as audi­ences await­ed the start of their snow­bound ​‘home­spun mur­der sto­ry’, Fargo.

What is estab­lished in that open­ing frame, where the film’s rai­son d’etre is laid out in qua­si-legal copy, is a pact between film­mak­er and film lover. The Coens extend their wool­ly-gloved hands out cour­te­ous­ly with a promise that you can trust them, and you take it. Of course, expec­ta­tions are made to be bro­ken. Bro­ken, bent, reduced to a pulpy mash and spat out from an indus­tri­al wood­chip­per. In Far­go, fact and fic­tion blur into the pow­der-white North Dako­ta win­ter, where the snow is stained pink by the copi­ous amounts of blood spilled.

A first-time view­er will have no doubt believ­ing the plau­si­bil­i­ty of the film’s crimes. Why wouldn’t a strug­gling, mid­dle-aged car sales­man seek a hit­man to kid­nap his wife? Know­ing the ran­som mon­ey avail­able for extor­tion from his wife’s wealthy father, Jer­ry Lun­de­gaard (William H Macy) seems to us as the pos­ses­sor of an ink-black heart and cal­cu­la­tive mind when he reach­es out to sea­soned jail­bird Gaear Grim­srud (Peter Stor­mare). The real­i­ty is Lun­der­gaard is an incom­pe­tent aver­age-joe with an equiv­a­lent IQ, and yet we still con­tin­ue to believe.

Why? Because crimes like Fargo’s hap­pen every­day some­where in the US Why else? Because the Coens told us they were telling the truth, and who are we to dis­agree? Far­go doesn’t tell any truths though. When the cred­its roll, the stan­dard-issue ​‘all per­sons fic­ti­tious’ dis­claimer takes its usu­al place in the pro­ceed­ings. Rather than being a crime, though, the Coens lib­er­ate cin­e­mat­ic nar­ra­tive from the con­ven­tion­al expec­ta­tion-deliv­ery dynamic.

When William H Macy found out that his bum­bling oaf, Jer­ry Lun­de­gaard, wasn’t root­ed in real­i­ty, and that he had been just as duped as the audi­ence, he con­front­ed the sib­ling direc­tors: ​“You can’t do that!” ​“Why not?” they replied. With one deft pull, the Coens unrav­elled the tapes­try of trust between audi­ence and film­mak­er and dared us to ques­tion what was so wrong with that. In this case, lin­ear­i­ty and truth telling are not mutu­al­ly exclusive.

Of course, we now know that the truth-pro­fess­ing dis­clo­sure was mere­ly styl­is­tic flair. But the Coens set a prece­dent in the mid ​’90s that cast a long shad­ow of nar­ra­tive sub­ver­sion, expec­ta­tion-destroy­ing film­mak­ing that even­tu­al­ly wound up right back home again. Enter Noah Haw­ley and the acclaimed FX adap­ta­tion of the Coens’ icy bloodbath.

Sea­son 2 of FX’s Far­go moved away from the both the film and the first sea­son in terms of plot and peri­od, but still embraced the nar­ra­tive sub­terfuge of the 1996 orig­i­nal with more brava­do and dar­ing than ever before. In the pilot episode, short­ly before Rye Ger­hardt (Rory Caulkin), the youngest fam­i­ly mem­ber of a local crime syn­di­cate, is hit by Peg­gy Blumquist (Kirsten Dun­st) as she speeds along the icy roads, he sees a bright tun­nel of light emerge from what is osten­si­bly a UFO in the trees.

In that moment, the 1996 audi­ence and the 2015 audi­ence are unit­ed in one shared gasp of bewil­der­ment. Noah Hawley’s writ­ing announces itself as the heir appar­ent to the Coen Broth­ers brand of nar­ra­tive yarn-spin­ning, even if it did take a full sea­son to get there. The title card from the film appears in sea­son one, but it’s not until the UFOs and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that com­prise sea­son two that Haw­ley real­ly hits his stride.

In the penul­ti­mate episode of sea­son two, ​‘The Cas­tle’, one more nar­ra­tive quirk final­ly nails shut the cof­fin of rudi­men­ta­ry ter­res­tri­al sto­ry-telling. ​“And so, we come to per­haps the blood­i­est chap­ter in the long and vio­lent his­to­ry of the Mid­west region,” informs the nar­ra­tor. But what nar­ra­tor, we ask? This show doesn’t have a nar­ra­tor. And why is it Lester Nygaard speak­ing to us? A man who died in the first sea­son, which takes place 30 years after the cur­rent time period.

In a sur­re­al twist, Mar­tin Freeman’s voice begins to reel off the events of the show thus far, and read­ies the sto­ry (visu­al­ly depict­ed onscreen like an ornate Grimm anthol­o­gy) for its vio­lent con­clu­sion. Haw­ley takes no pris­on­ers in this fourth-wall shat­ter­ing final touch, and if the film’s orig­i­nal hoax was mild­ly annoy­ing to duped fans, then this is seis­mic in its nar­ra­tive implications.

Far­go lit the torch for unortho­dox sto­ry­telling in 1996, and Noah Haw­ley car­ries that torch aloft through the frozen plains of Fargo’s TV coun­ter­part. Sea­son three looms large on the hori­zon and, with the announced twin pro­tag­o­nists both being played by Ewan McGre­gor, its hard not to pre­pare for more nar­ra­to­r­i­al wood­chip­per­ing. The Coens have made a career out of trick­ing us, and we’ll keep watch­ing as long as they are will­ing to do so. We like to be wrong, we just don’t like to admit it.