Great Movie Scenes: Fargo, the "TV Scene"

*This highlight contains spoilers for the movie Fargo*

So I reviewed Fargo a few days back and rewatched it yesterday to see if I picked up on anything new. I did.

Somehow I totally missed a really brilliant scene that I think emphasises just how hot the Coens are on details that are easy to miss. It's only around a minute long, but that minute conveys so much.

Right after an amusing interlude in which cop Marge Gunderson interviews two dim-witted prostitutes, the scene cuts to a zoomed out shot of a snowy shack. Inside Gaear and Carl are waiting with the kidnapped Jean for a ransom call.

Even from the location shot we can hear Buscemi's Carl muttering insults at the TV set in the cabin. As the film's wonderfully calm soundtrack plays in the background, the camera moves inside.

From there the view passes from Carl banging the TV and becoming increasingly infuriated, back to Gaear (who is sitting silently, almost as if catatonic) and then on to Jean, who is also quiet but breathing quickly as though scared, a bag over her head.

These shots repeat themselves, zooming in further on each character slightly. As the scene progresses, Carl's lamentations grow more desperate.

"There's nothin' to do!" he cries helplessly. "F**kin' TV won't even...come on, baby! Plug me inta the ozone! F**kin' shit box!"

All through the scene the background music proceeds with contradictory gentleness, building in volume as the camera finally begins zooming in on the malfunctioning TV screen. As we zoom in, Carl's profanity gets worse and worse until he is apparently screaming at the TV in an uncontrollable rage ("F**K! F**K!!").

The TV suddenly gets a picture and the music and yelling stops immediately - a beetle in a nature documentary scuttles around, and the view zooms out to show that the TV is located in the room of Marge, who is happily cuddling up to her husband.

The first time I saw the scene, I really, really laughed. Buscemi's ability to make his character so ludicrously irate over such a trivial affair is really convincing. Stormare's Gaear is so zoned out and disinterested that he highlights this really well.

Then I got to thinking - other than for the amusement factor, why was this scene included? Why was the music chosen for this scene?

The music is a haunting violin piece that plays recurringly throughout the film. Here it contradicts Carl's screaming and at the same time invites us to speculate a higher purpose to the events shown.

Then I realised - the scene is actually very significant in determining the moral compass of the story and comments on the personalities of the characters. In that 40 seconds to a minute, this small scene sums up everything that makes the movie great.

Buscemi's character throughout the film becomes increasingly violent, erratic and uncaring. Not only does this scene foreshadow his eventual fate and the disintegration of any humanity he had, it also throws light on the state of his life and Marge's quote at the end of the film (see the review).

Carl's life is so empty and futile that he just loses it if he can't watch TV. He isolates himself from what he seems to crave (company) by picking a silent brute for a partner and gagging his hostage. He sleeps with call girls throughout the film, apparently unable and unwilling to emotionally commit to a woman. In a way, I think he's perhaps one of the most tragic characters in the story, he's just so pathetic.

Gaear, meanwhile, is (to quote Ebert), a "sullen slug". He'd be just as happy with the TV broken as fixed. He's happy not to talk to anyone. If you annoy him, he's happy to kill you. We can't even imagine what he'd want to spend the ransom money on, because he doesn't even seem to have a shred of human normality in his being. He doesn't have a life at all.

Both of them ignore Jean completely in this scene, showing the fundamental selfishness and lack of empathy they both have for other human beings. It is also, interestingly, the first and only time we see Jean after the kidnapping and before Gaear callously kills her off-screen.

As for what's on the screen - a beetle in Marge's house, on a nature show. Carl cannot pick the reception for this programme up. Does that suggest that his actions are fundamentally against the natural way of things? I think they certainly highlight another disconnect between people like Carl and Gaear and "functioning" society.

The narrator explains that the beetle is "carrying a worm back to it's nest", a striking parallel with the kidnapping which I think is meant to encourage this train of thought.

Marge by contrast is happy simply being with her husband, and eventually decides she is going to sleep. She has no need for the TV, or the material desires that it represents.

Ironically, the guy who gets to watch the TV in the end is the disinterested Gaear.

That so much inferrence can be put into a single minute of film is pretty remarkable.

Great film, great scene. Here's the YouTube recording: