Fargo

Jerry Lundegaard's crime starts as a way to solve his problems without admitting what they are. Every move he makes to keep the kidnapping contained hands somebody else leverage over him, and Carl and Gaear turn his plan into something he cannot steer. Marge Gunderson gets to the truth by taking ordinary details seriously while everyone around the crime is busy being clever. Jerry is arrested, Gaear is caught feeding Carl into a wood chipper, and Marge goes home to Norm.

A small scheme requires a larger lie

Jerry never looks capable of the crime he has arranged, and that is part of what makes him dangerous. He keeps talking like the next conversation will sort it out. With Wade. With the kidnappers. With Marge. Every fix he makes creates one more person who has to be managed. His corruption is not a decision, it is maintenance. He spends the whole film servicing the first dishonest thing he did.

Greed makes everyone easier to use

Jerry sees his wife as a way to get money. Carl sees a kidnapping as a transaction. Wade thinks cash entitles him to run the handover. None of them can leave another person simply human for very long. Even Carl's rage about the Sierra is really about what he thinks he is owed.

The Coens keep Jerry surrounded by blank offices, parking lots, glass doors and enormous fields of snow. In his head he is running a complicated operation. On screen he looks tiny in rooms he cannot command.

Violence escapes the story that hired it

Jerry thinks violence is a service you can buy a fixed amount of. Gaear destroys that idea almost immediately. The traffic stop, the two witnesses, Wade in the parking garage, Carl at the cabin. The bodies pile up far past anything Jerry planned. Violence is never as obedient as the person who hired it expects. By the wood chipper his original money problem barely exists.

Decency refuses to become impressed

Marge sees the whole ugly thing and refuses to make it impressive. Her reaction to Gaear in the back of the car is almost baffled: people are dead, all for a little bit of money, and she cannot find whatever the criminals thought was clever about it. Frances McDormand plays it without any anger. Marge sounds tired and genuinely puzzled, and that strips the crime of the importance Jerry wanted it to have.

Marriage exposes what ambition hides

Jerry and Jean share a house and almost nothing else, right up until she becomes part of his plan. Marge and Norm talk about eggs, stamps, paintings, sleep. The contrast is quiet and total. One marriage has become a piece of machinery. The other is where two people do not have to perform.

Good work depends on small facts

Marge solves it by paying attention, not by being brilliant at anyone. She notices a story that does not fit, goes back to the dealership, and changes her mind when new information turns up. It looks ordinary because she does not need the work to make her important.

• What are you hoping one dishonest shortcut will fix?
• Who around you has started being useful to you instead of a person?
• You knew before you did it. What did you tell yourself?
• Which compromise came first, and have you ever confessed that one?