Fargo — What is Man?
W hat is man that you are mindful of him Lord
You made the stars, you made the sun
And all the worlds that came to be at your command
What is man? What has he done?Then you crown him with glory and with honor
Give him dominion over land and sea and air
And store up an inheritance in heaven
Oh what is man that you would care?
What is man that you would let him live at all
To shed the blood of his own kind
And ever fail to even follow where you call
What is man? Why do you mind?
Yet you crown me with glory and with honor
Give me dominion over land and sea and air
And store up my inheritance in heaven
Oh, what is man, that you care?
What is man, Lord, that you would care?
Those are the lyrics that Johnny Cash sings over the opening montage of the final episode of Fargo season 4 — a montage of many of the characters who were killed over the course of the season. It’s essential to pay attention to those lyrics if the season is to make sense at all.
I was really looking forward to Fargo — I’ve enjoyed the other seasons very much (ranking in my mind, against most others’ opinions — 3/1/2) and written about them a few times — here (season 2) and here (season 3).
And while I don’t see this season as a waste of time, it’s definitely the weakest of the four so far, and a disappointment.
Here’s why (I think) — and the placement of that Johnny Cash songs illustrates my point.
When we think of Fargo , we think “quirky, random violence in the upper Midwest” — and that’s true, and it’s a feature definitely carried over from the Coen brothers film to the series.
But there’s another feature, another sensibility that’s a very strong part of not only the Fargo universe up to this point, but the other three seasons as well:
A sense of cosmic justice at work in the world.
Yes, the Coens are ultimately agnostic about the source of that cosmic justice (this agnosticism being the explicit theme of A Serious Man) , but it’s definitely a force to be reckoned with in all of their films — a force that evil fights and seeks to have its own way with, and a force that the good somehow, even through weakness and bumbling, channels.
And that’s what’s missing from season 4.
For here, in this world of Kansas City mobsters fighting it out, we have really nothing but chaotic power-seeking. There’s no sense that any of this means anything or that there’s anyone in this world who is connected, in any way, to a greater sense of good and human wholeness. (Maybe the Mormon law guy, but he was too quirky and well, we know what happened to him. )
There’s not a soul in this piece with an actual conscience that connects him or her to truth or the greater good.
Ethelrida Smutney, the intelligent, clear-eyed young Black woman whose story somewhat — somewhat — frames the rest of the story, seemed like she might play that role, but in the end, her self-appointed task is more about self-preservation and power- albeit in a more minor key — than any broader sense of justice, good or truth.
(And lest you think I’m being idealistic here, the major good-seeking characters in previous seasons have been forthrightly about these values — in every case they’re female, as the original police officer in the the film was.)
Which leads me to assume that this was the point of this season, especially given the lyrics of that opening song.
Basically: human beings screw up the lives they’ve been given. Massively. And it’s chaos, blood and destruction — and a lot of lies.
That’s not an illegitimate point to make, artistically. Fine. My problem with it is twofold: it’s not dramatically compelling — it’s endurable for a two-hour movie, but over the course of an eleven-hour series, it gets tiresome and beats the viewer down. Secondly, there was so much else going on in this season, any point — whether this or the others Hawley was trying to make — were diluted.
So, for example, it was said from the beginning that a big focus of this season was the shape of American life: who rises, who falls, and what it all means. The idea was that this story of ethnically-based gangs fighting for power is a sort of metaphor for the social and political fabric of life in the United States since the beginning. I can see it, but I don’t think it worked here.
Which brings us back to the chaotic power-seeking and bloodletting. This — that opening montage communicates — is what human beings do with the gift of life on earth.
Okay, except that the season gives us no real alternative to make that theme poignant or powerful. Most of the characters are only superficially drawn, there are no real alternatives to this live that can be glimpsed, no understanding of other choices that could be made.
In previous seasons of Fargo, that’s one of the elements that works to keep the viewer on the edge of her seat, engaged — the characters we meet always have meaningful choices to make — in the context of a decent life, they encounter evil, evil tempts them — what will they do?
I understand the canvas is different here — if the chaotic, power-seeking basis of human social interaction is the point, so it is — that’s the point. It’s just tiresome and leaves out a piece of the human experience, so it becomes dull after a time.
Now. Here’s my main takeaway from this season — and it’s a positive one.
One of the themes I picked up early on is related to the overarching tone of chaos, and it’s something I thought was really, really interesting:
During the course of this season, characters in power — the leaders of the rival gangs, the law — are forever making choices — terrible, murderous choices — based on wrong information and incorrect assumptions. Gang wars are set in motion because a leader thinks that his guy was purposely targeted by a rival gang when really, his guy’s death was caused by another, unrelated factor or even an accident.
I thought that was fascinating and potentially quite dramatically suggestive.
Because, really, isn’t that so true about human life? We experience life at one level, day-to-day — and assume that what we’re experiencing is due to Cause X and Cause Y when perhaps we are totally wrong about that — and even if we’re correct, the deeper causes of why that car happened to be in the place it was when it rammed into us at that intersection — go much deeper than “The other driver was looking at his phone” — as in, he was looking at his phone because he was worried about his mom who is ill and who might need him to come down to Florida and help her because his dad died last year of liver disease from drinking because he could never get over the trauma of the abuse he suffered as a child from his stepfather who married his mother because…..
You get the idea.
Cause and effect — never clear, endlessly confusing and never really straightforward when we’re talking about human beings.
What a mess we make based on what we think is a deliberate offense, when really it was either just an accident or a crazy person doing some crazy person things that happened to catch us in the crossfire.
Which also ties into the (I thought) very effective final scenes of the season, in which the question of whose story we’ve been watching all along is both declared and then immediately called into question,
And that, my friends, it seems, would have made a much more powerful season of Fargo: but it was too overstuffed with incident and character, got repetitious and tedious and was unfocused because of it.
I enjoyed a lot of it — I loved the look and the aesthetic. I found a lot of the characters intriguing and unique — a biracial mortuary-owning couple in 1950’s Kansas City? A striving Black gangster head thinking ahead of his time, business-wise? A Mormon cop? An Irishman called “Rabbi?” Good stuff.
But ultimately, too much, and too many ideas fighting for dominance, with none emerging in a compelling way — and most importantly — in a compelling way in a meaningful context offering the possibility of good, not just chaos — that focuses that question all good drama ultimately leads us to ask:
What is man? What has he done?
Originally published at http://amywelborn.wordpress.com on November 30, 2020.