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I re-watched Fargo recently for the first time since it came out (almost 30 years ago, which might make you feel old). It's a very good movie, showcasing all of the Coen brothers' (and cinematographer Roger Deakins's) many strengths. There's still something empty about the experience, though, and I'm not talking about the snow-swept Minnesota plains. James Berardinelli of ReelViews zeroes in on this when he says, "The problem with Fargo is that there aren't any substantial characters. Everyone, from the overwrought Jerry to the methodical Marge, is a pure caricature. None of these people are particularly interesting or sympathetic, and watching their exploits becomes a detached experience. By the end of the film, you're more interested in how the filmmakers choose to tie together loose ends than whether any particular individual lives or dies."

There's one exception in my view: Jean Lundegaard, played by Kristin Rudrüd. We watch her go from her couch, absently gazing at the ominous masked figures behind the sliding glass doors like they were characters on her TV, and then, from there, wending her panicked and terrorized way toward an inevitable useless death, initiated by the one person who should have cared for her the most. The most poignant scene in the film is the one in which Carl, the small-time hood turned kidnapper and murderer (and Jerry's expressive and assertive alter ego, from a psychological perspective), laughs as Jean blindly tries to scramble to freedom with a bag over her head. To me, she was the one really sympathetic character in the movie. In contrast, I didn't feel much of anything when the cops catch up to Jerry.

Frances McDormand won the Oscar for Best
Actress in 1997 for her performance in Fargo

I'm forever seeing plot glitches in movies, and in the expertly plotted Fargo there's really only one small one: how pregnant Marge managed to take homicidal Gaear Grimsrud into custody in the "prowler" (police cruiser) after shooting him in the leg on the frozen lake following the wood chipper scene. It happens offscreen, but I can't quite picture how she would have managed it alone. Or is is possible that the "convoy" we see after the prowler soliloquy is one she's traveling in? The way I saw it, she's alone and the convoy is coming to meet her. But maybe I always read that wrong.

Good, great
James Berardinelli concludes that "It's easy to admire what the Coens are trying to do in Fargo, but more difficult to actually like the film." I like the film, and a lot of people liked the film, but I agree that it's very good rather than great. It lacks heart. There's no spirituality in it from the filmmakers, who are very hard on their characters, almost cruelly holding every last one of them up to ridicule and contempt—a quality of movies I call "making the puppets dance." But I also came across what I thought was a truly great movie the other night, one that's full of heart: Brief Encounter, a British film from 1946.

Here's how I got to it: after I wrote about Great Expectations the other day, in this post, I re-watched that film. I'm not much for movies, and don't know much about them, and it was the first time I ever connected the 1945 Great Expectations to director David Lean, he of the sweeping Technicolor epics Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge On the River Kwai. Reading reviews of Great Expectations (another story with no truly sympathetic characters) was what led me to his Brief Encounter, which is highly thought of in the UK, considered the masterpiece of Lean's earlier period.

Brief Encounter zips right into the top 20 of my lifetime list. I loved it. The movie is about an illicit affair between two married people who meet by chance in a train station. Both are deeply decent, and struggle to balance their feelings with their personal integrity. And in this movie, what appears to be its plot glitch actually might not be, which delighted me. The movie tells the story in voiceover and in retrospect, as the lead character, Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson, who is superb as well as superbly cast), imagines being able to tell her apparently clueless husband about her affair which has just ended. Of course, as she muses silently to herself at the beginning, he's the one person she can actually never tell. The whole central part of the film is told from her perspective, and it naturally follows that her narrative only consists of things she knows.

But there's one scene she relates that she couldn't have witnessed. The two lovers, Laura Jesson and Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard), have ended up somehow at a flat (apartment) belonging to a friend of Alec's, where they intend to consummate their ever-escalating emotional affair. But the friend whose flat it is returns home early, unexpectedly, and Laura hurriedly escapes out the back. She then relates the confrontation between the two male friends back at the apartment. How could she? She didn't witness that. What I think it means, though, is that Alec told her all about it later—what looks like a plotting glitch could actually be a testament to his honesty and intimacy with her, and to the closeness of their friendship.

That's just one minor detail. It's a great film, with a complicated but completely successful structure. And the cinematography, by Robert Krasker, is excellent, worth seeing the movie for on its own. I've been combing the internet for reviews of it ever since I saw it.

Celia Johnson was nominated for Best Actress
in a Leading Role at the Oscars in 1947

Oddly, too, and purely coincidentally I'm sure, there's a parallel or echoing scene in Fargo, made 50 years after Brief Encounter, when a dolled-up Police Chief Marge, apparently toying with the idea of experimenting with infidelity herself (her husband is portrayed—or caricatured—as dutiful but dull), meets an old classmate in a Radisson in Minneapolis. But he turns out to be mentally or emotionally disturbed, something of a stalker, concocting lies about his life when in reality he lives with his parents. Later, Marge, the expert detective, realizes with a shock that she has nearly blundered into a bad mistake, and she returns to her husband, whose dullness the Coens double down on in the closing scenes. But in Brief Encounter, Laura Jesson's husband, who has also been caricatured as being dull and distracted, actually blooms into a fully human character in the very last seconds of the movie. Beyond brilliant.

It was odd seeing both of these movies one after the other—values, assumptions, and movie-making conventions sure changed over those 50 years—and a bit strange to see these faint parallels. There's nothing similar about the two films really. Many people don't watch old movies—my son won't—but both of these, one quite old now and the other much older, are well worth watching if you ask me. If you pass on Fargo I won't argue, but do put Brief Encounter on your short list, if you haven't already seen it.

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

Stuart: "Funny you putting '(apartment)' after the British 'flat'; Billy Wilder got the idea for his film The Apartment (1960, Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine) from the flat scene in Brief Encounter.

"There's a nice circle of coincidence here that also provides some good watching...The Apartment is the 1960 Oscar winner for best picture. It beat Our Man In Havana to a Golden Globe and Directors Guild of America award. Our Man In Havana has Noel Coward hamming it up to the hilt and a British, err, diplomat. And this gets us nicely back to Brief Encounter, as it was based on a Noel Coward one act play. So there's a couple more films for you to settle down to, even if you've seen them before."

David: "You can experience Brief Encounter in two ways. The first is to watch it and appreciate it for its qualities as a movie, the acting, cinematography and dialog. The second way is wake up one day and find yourself living it—finding yourself suddenly in the most beautiful train wreck, both blessed and cursed at the same time, midair and out of control, wondering how you got there. One way you will lean the phrase 'quite soberly and without wings.' The other way, find out how that feels. One is a little harder than the other."

Robert Elswit: "Given the age of your readers I'm sure many of them share your love for old movies. There were quite a few British films made just after World War II. Robert Krasker was an extraordinary cinematographer, and along with The Third Man there was his earlier collaboration with the director Carol Reed called Odd Man Out. A somewhat low-key thriller, it follows a very young James Mason as he tries to escape the police after a botched IRA robbery in Belfast. Great performances throughout, including a larger-than-life Robert Newton.

"Before Lean's collaboration with Coward on Brief Encounter there was the World War II drama In Which We Serve. Coward wrote and stars in the film as well as sharing directing credit with Lean. Made in the middle of the Second World War, it tells the story of the survivors of the sinking of a British destroyer as they flash back on their earlier lives. Celia Johnson, your favorite from Brief Encounter, makes her appearance here as Coward's wife. For David Lean fans, there's also the funny and charming Hobson's Choice starring Charles Lawton and a young John Mills made in the early '50s."

Mike replies: I watched Hobson's Choice too, after Great Expectations.