On the 27th of next month, the new season of the must-see divine drama "Ice Storm" for crime fans will return.
In the days of waiting for it, we may wish to look back at the original work of this divine drama -
Ice Storm
Fargo
Perhaps for many people, the American version is better because it is more bizarre, bloodier, and more violent.
However, the structure of the drama version is completely based on the film, perfectly inheriting the essential style of the Coen brothers.
Black humor, absurdity!
Released in 1996, the film is one of the coen brothers' early masterpieces.
Won Best Director and Best Original Screenplay at cannes and the Oscars respectively.
(Left: Ethan Cohen; right: Joel Cohen)
The Cohen brother's eldest brother, Joel Cohen's wife, Francis, was known as Cohen's sister-in-law.
Five-time Oscar nomination, two-time best actress nomination and two film queens,
They were "Ice Storm" in 1996 and "Three Billboards" in 2017.
The film tells the story of a thrilling and bloody serial murder case, which takes place in the most boring part of the United States, the cold state of Minnesota.
Only ice and snow, cold to the point of cruelty.
The first shot is a patch of white, faintly, the silhouette of a car appears, emitting two faint dots of light.
When I arrived in front of my eyes, I suddenly realized that it was a car dragging another broken car, and in the climax of the sudden rise of the background music, the camera was used again.
Then 5 black letters appear: F A R G O.
A feeling of warmth and a breath of cool air is instantly transmitted, and the story unfolds.
Male protagonist Jerry (William M.) H. Messi, Frank in Shameless) is a sales manager at a car dealership.
Words and deeds show a mid-life crisis, nothing can be achieved, and there are nests.
Give customers a smile outside, and be looked down upon by the husband at home.
Although he had no worries about food and clothing, because this job was given to him by the old man, it was not comfortable to do it.
He wanted to open a parking lot and have his own business.
However, the old man was reluctant to invest in him!
So he came up with a plan.
Find a killer to kidnap his wife and cheat the old man's money!
He asked someone to find a killer, and in order to facilitate the crime, he also stole a new car from the car dealership as a deposit.
But when we met and agreed, we found that it was actually two people!
One is The Talking Carl, and the other is the taciturn Chia,
And he didn't know anything about these two people.
Here Jerry played a little clever, he concealed the killer that the ransom was 80,000, and after the fact, it was half divided, he was forty thousand, and the killer was forty thousand.
But what he planned to ask for was actually 1 million.
The killer received the task and went to Jerry's house the next day to kidnap his wife, and Jerry also successfully fooled the old man to prepare 1 million.
I thought that the plan would be executed seamlessly, but the killer's performance just appeared showed that these two people were unreliable and absolutely had to have an accident.
After all, the unreliable Jerry made an unreliable plan, and also found two unreliable killers to execute, of course, the execution will not go smoothly!
On the killer's way back, a police officer chased them on the way and demanded that they get out of the car immediately for inspection.
In order to emphasize that he is the boss, in addition to nagging along the way, he must show his ability to solve problems at this time.
However, he thought too much, and the bribe was not only unsuccessful, but also aroused the suspicion of the police, who asked him to get out of the car immediately for inspection.
With hostages strapped to the back seat, in order to prevent the matter from being revealed, Chia took out a pistol without expression and fired a clean shot at the police.
And the sacrificial policeman became the first domino to fall.
Although the killer is unreliable in his mission, the killing is absolutely first-class.
While disposing of the policeman's body, a car drove by and two bear children witnessed the whole process.
Kia immediately turned around and chased after them, coldly killing the two of them.
Since then, more and more cards have fallen, and the number of unjust souls has gradually increased.
As a result of these two murders, Sheriff Maggie intervened to investigate the matter and finally successfully solved the case.
The story is such a story.
However, the Coen brothers made a poor criminal story into a great movie through the character of Maggie.
Just look at these two scenes on the road, whether from the sense of camera or narrative, just look at this paragraph, you will feel that the killer is the protagonist.
However, the director stressed in more than one interview that they deliberately let the heroine appear after 30 minutes.
By this time, all the elements of the crime are in place.
You know, this movie is only 90 minutes in total, and there is no heroine in the first act, but it will appear later, just like after the film!
The character is too powerful! The human setting can also be said to be the most powerful image of Cohen's sister-in-law in so many movies.
At three o'clock in the morning, the phone rang, and a woman with a big belly put on her police uniform and prepared to go out into minnesota's winter to investigate the murder.
It is not a cold and tough man who is tracking down the case, nor is it a woman with quick hands, but a pregnant woman with limited mobility!
In the first 30 minutes, the audience saw the brutality and bloodiness of the killer, and the camera turned to be pregnant to solve the case!
Can you imagine? The ruthless and cruel killer lost at the hands of pregnant women.
A weight-bearing action, waking up in the morning with morning vomiting, and speaking in an accent with a pronounced Distinct Minnesota accent (will constantly repeat the "yeah" whose pronunciation has become "ya"). ) on the hands of pregnant women.
It is true that life is impermanent, and people are not as good as heaven.
Maggie was wise and intuitively told her that the culprit was not from here.
She simply went to the big city to investigate, asked a Japanese friend Mike if there was a good place to eat here, but did not expect to be harassed by the other party.
In fact, whether it is the setting of pregnancy solving the case, or the complete paragraph of being entangled by former classmates, it seems completely dispensable at first glance.
But it is precisely these two paragraphs that pluck Cohen's sister-in-law from the image of the police.
She became the greatest female figure in the history of cinema, not the greatest policeman.
At the same time, it also allows the police and victims to show all in one dimension of a problem, and falls on the personal emotional family.
How to work when pregnant, how to deal with the entanglement of former classmates, and the scene of eating with Mike also led Maggie to successfully solve the case.
Because this clip shows a lonely person who can't resist the urge to lie and try in vain to hide his despair.
The male protagonist Jerry is undoubtedly a troubled and desperate person, and his frustration and fear are inwardly erupting.
The shutters in his office visually resemble the iron railings of a prison.
And the camera faces his collapse as withdrawn, cold and restrained.
When he is mad in the office, the director will find a way to suppress, with the observation of the shooting style, with the absurdity of the characters.
When he was humiliated by the old man and swung out, the camera was looking down, and on the white snow, there was only one car for him.
Then he slowly got into the car, did not shoot him in the front, you can not see the expression, but the water vapor exhaled from the back.
Then he got out of the car, took a shovel to shovel the ice of the car glass, and in the cold temperature, emotions accumulated and exploded.
There are no lines in the whole film about how cold it is here, but the audience feels it strongly, and the place is cold like this.
It was so cold that in just a few minutes of conversation, it froze to ice.
The essence of film noir is a kind of film spirit, a kind of awakening of the individual under the suppression of the social environment, the confusion and despair of the characters.
The characters do a small rebellion in the predicament, but in the end there is no change, life is still that life, the world is still that world, and how it should be in the end.
Just like the director said at the beginning, this story is based on real events, except for the names of people.
Because of this, a Japanese girl went to Minnesota to find the box of money.
(Kumiko The Treasure Hunter)
But it's not, it's fake! This is a completely fictional story!
The reason why the Coen brothers made this joke is probably that life itself is so absurd, empty, bizarre and bloody!