Goodness is freedom . . . Ya, you betcha!
Matt Zoller Seitz on Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson in Fargo:
As pregnant policewoman Marge Gunderson, McDormand is a turtle with a badge and a Holden Caulfield hat, waddling around snowy vistas, calmly demanding that everyone she encounters -- from scumbag criminals to lovelorn ex-classmates -- be as honest, dignified and professional as she is. ("I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there, Lou.") Yet McDormand's so warm, so idiosyncratic, that Marge never comes across as a kooky scold; she makes the woman's carved-from-marble personality traits seem an outgrowth of Marge's worldview rather than a grab-bag of eccentricities. The character's decency seems to have been self-constructed rather than inherited; that makes Marge's final condemnation of Peter Stormare's murderous felon less a moral-of-the-story monologue than a vindication of bourgeois values that modern Hollywood treats as slave chains. "There's more to life than a little money, you know," Marge says. "Don't you know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well, I just don't understand it." For Marge, goodness is freedom.
As pregnant policewoman Marge Gunderson, McDormand is a turtle with a badge and a Holden Caulfield hat, waddling around snowy vistas, calmly demanding that everyone she encounters -- from scumbag criminals to lovelorn ex-classmates -- be as honest, dignified and professional as she is. ("I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there, Lou.") Yet McDormand's so warm, so idiosyncratic, that Marge never comes across as a kooky scold; she makes the woman's carved-from-marble personality traits seem an outgrowth of Marge's worldview rather than a grab-bag of eccentricities. The character's decency seems to have been self-constructed rather than inherited; that makes Marge's final condemnation of Peter Stormare's murderous felon less a moral-of-the-story monologue than a vindication of bourgeois values that modern Hollywood treats as slave chains. "There's more to life than a little money, you know," Marge says. "Don't you know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well, I just don't understand it." For Marge, goodness is freedom.
posted by Kate Marie | 11:02 AM | Permalink
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2 comments
2 Comments:
That character, created by the writers, the director, and most importantly, her, is one of the greatest and most memorable in the history of cinema. I love that movie. It plays like an oral symphony.
"And I suppose that would be your accomplice in the wood chipper"?
I've always loved those last lines by Marge. It's not really scolding...its more like an utterance of a given, universal truth.
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