Review: Fargo

The Coen brothers’ 1996 movie Fargo was typical of the sibling team: idiosyncratic, well-made and, as a result, a popular cult hit. Thus, a TV spin-off seemed doomed to mediocrity. Such translation from big to little screen sounds a bizarre venture – usually it is the opposite way around. Admittedly, the two mediums are now closer than ever. Since The Sopranos took elements of cinema to long-form TV drama, we have seen a number of highly successful programs that are really just long films.

What creator Noah Hawley has done so well is to recreate the overall ‘feel’ of the film. Many elements are similar, from individual scenes to motifs to character types. The same snowy plains of northern border country are once again home to the strange wit and depraved horror of the original story. Distinctive Scandinavian-American accents add a touch of parody to the homicidal plot. Yet he has injected sufficiently novel ideas to keep the venture fresh. The individuals are entirely new, as is the story, spread out over ten episodes at a tantalizing pace. This is a prerequisite for something that relies on viewers returning week after week.

Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) is a passive mediocre insurance salesman in Bemidji, Minnesota. Much the same as car salesman Jerry Lundegaard in the original, he is a born loser, all deference and mediocrity. His wife bullies him, his brother bullies him, his high school bully still bullies him. One day, however, Lester's apologetic nature changes after a chance encounter with an out-of-town nutjob. Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) is the archetypal charismatic psychopath, his clothes as snappy as his threatening banter (and temper). Convincing Lester to stand up for himself, Mrs. Nygaard is battered to death with a hammer. Soon, the two are enmeshed in a cycle of murder which draws the attention of homely rookie cop Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman).

British actor Martin Freeman seemed like an odd choice to play the lead, as Fargo is so entrenched in its American world. Yet this unexpected casting has paid off, Freeman well able to capture the bubbling evil spilling out of the repressed nobody, all with a lightly comic touch. Think of the other average joes he has played: Tim in The Office, Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit and Watson in Sherlock. Billy Bob Thornton also manages to tread the line between serious and comedic, but with an icy menace that escapes from the television. Like Lester, we may know that Lorne is not a role model, yet there is something so infectiously appealing. Various simple Minnesotan folk and small-town trailer trash saddos enter this world to offer witticisms or be creatively slaughtered.

Fargo has managed to shrug off the weight of expectation and bring a brilliant slice of entertainment to the small screen in its own right. It retains all the positive elements of the film and strides off confidently in its own direction where necessary. I can only predict improvement as the weeks continue. 

'Highly irregular is the time I found a human foot in a toaster oven.'

Review: The Double

Until recently, Richard Ayoade was known primarily as a cult TV comedy actor and that nerd from The IT Crowd. With his directorial debut, Submarine (2010), Ayoade has started to create a name for himself as a promising filmmaker. The aforementioned production was a downbeat, quirky British feature about a mildly eccentric Welsh boy's growing pains. It was packed with dry wit, dark humour and bleak outlook. Ayoade has retained some of those elements, and exaggerated others, in his latest release. The Double is an adaptation of the Dostoevsky novel of the same name, about a low-grade governmental employee who loses his mind when a doppelganger starts stealing his life.

That basically describes the plot of the film, too. Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) plays Simon James, a depressed minor civil servant who suffers from crippling self-doubt. He is in love with aloof co-worker Hannah (Mia Wasikowska) but too nervous to do anything about it. Between his crushingly miserable job, empty ramshackle flat and passive aggressive mother there is nothing in Simon's life. That is before his lookalike James Simon shows up, finding employment in his office and generally dazzling everyone with his gregarious charm. For James Simon is the reverse of Simon James, the other side of the same-DNA coin, and is a man who gets what he wants. The extrovert knows that 'the world steps aside for a man who knows where he's going', and proceeds to punish hapless Simon. He steals Hannah, Simon's flat and eventually pushes him out of the company. 

Visually, The Double is predictably being compared to Brazil and Eraserhead. Ayoade has created an Orwellian dystopia of a setting, somewhere unnamed where the Soviet apartment blocks have a North Korean attitude to electrical supply. Simon's company is just a grey building of grey cubicles and grey employees, run by their Big Brother boss, 'The Colonel'. The whole thing looks great, in a depressing kind of way, and Ayoade has filmed it spectacularly. Stylish use of light, camera work and soundtrack instills the feeling that we are ourselves immersed in an inescapable '80s dictatorship. But what is the point of doing this? The film really could have been set anywhere, because it is not about exterior themes but interior ones. Politics and architecture has nothing to do with the personal issues at the heart of the story. As funny as the catch-22 bureaucracy and health-and-safety-gone-mad incidents are, they do distract from the themes at the heart of the story. What it does do, nonetheless, is make the audience feel like depressed Simon.

Is the film about two characters or just the one? Is James another part of Simon or is he really a separate person? For me, The Double does tell the story of two people, but in a wider sense is an examination of the complexities of human personality. The use of a Kafka-esque plot is a neat way to muse, Jungian-ly, on these matters. Simon's inability, then need, to assert himself is as important as the jokes and aesthetics. I suspect that Ayoade has created a work far deeper than a contemporary review will be able to analyse comprehensively.

The plot is not particularly original. Maybe it was in nineteenth century Russia, but in cinema the identity theft scenario has been played already. Richard E. Grant even saw himself usurped by his own boil (How to Get Ahead in Advertising). Still, there is a wickedly dark humour. Comic cameos pop up constantly, with the likes of Tim Key, Chris Morris and Chris O'Dowd. Most of Submarine's cast is present, taking with them some of the flavour of their last collaboration. Eisenberg is well-suited to both roles, for he plays James and Simon.This film will be cinematic Marmite - but love it or hate it, there's no doubt that Ayoade has shown that he is not a one trick pony in terms of filmmaking. One to watch...