Fargo

I’ve never really liked the movies of the Coen Brothers. All their films are formally exquisite, but way too snide and condescending, in an annoyingly facile and self-congratulatory way. Fargo is probably their best film; I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it, and they maintained a better balance between suspense and sarcasm than they usually do. But it still feels slick and empty afterwards. Maybe I’m just being a curmudgeon about Joel and Ethan Coen; everyone else seems to love them. But something just doesn’t connect for me; it’s not that I object to cynicism, necessarily, but it annoys me how the Coens are too cynical to even own up to the consequences of their own cynicism.