Coen Brothers Blog

This Coen Brothers Unit that we just had has been my favorite unit so far. Not just in Art of Film II, but Art of Film I, as well. The Coens are geniuses at incorporate violence and mystery with humor and comical characters. The movie that did that the best, in my opinion, was Fargo. Fargo is also a great movie for Minnesotans because it takes place in the Twin Cities, which allows it to gain a larger intrigue from many Minnesotans. In one scene where Jerry Lundegaard was standing outside his father-in-law's car dealership, you can see a sign saying "100 North/South" just under "Xenia Place" or something like that, which is highway 394 and its intersection with highway 100. (I thought that was pretty cool...) Even though the movie itself completely embelished Minnesotan accents and at some points it was hard to even listen to certain characters, I thought that the movie was really good

One of my absolute favorite scenes in the movie can be summed up with a single word and everyone should know what I'm talking about: Woodchipper. Yes, the woodchipper scene where Gaear Grimsrud (?) kills Carl Showalter and puts his body through, well, the woodchipper. I had been talking to my friends about the movie, and immediately when I brought up if they had seen it or not, they asked, "Isn't that the movie where the guy gets put in the woodchipper?" I thought it was funny that the movie was really known for the scene.