• It changes from time to time but I think, at least for the last 2 years or so, that this is the Coen brothers’ best work
  • People who think this film launched their career into another stratosphere are exaggerating a bit- I mean their previous film starred Paul Newman.
  • It’s simply one of the 5 best screenplays of the 90’s
  • The Coens have created some of cinema’s greatest characters—Lebowski is right there- but I don’t think it gets better than their creation and construction of Frances McDormand’s Marge Gunderson
  • It’s a black comic crime genre spectacle and iconoclastically “Coen”—brazen
  • It may also be Carter Burwell’s greatest achievement with the film score—it’s unique- but it builds and rolls over the top like Bernard Herrmann’s Taxi Driver score
  • Period and location details- not just the accents by a long stretch but mise-en-scene for sure- scrapping the car off, the clothes, the hair, but make no mistake about it- the coens are in love with this unique vernacular… but there’s more– tonight show in bed, cheesy picture at the car dealership, macy’s wife with her voice inflections
  • Intro to Marge at 33 min in—pregnant, ducks from John Carroll Lynch (how about him showing range as the loving husband here in 1996 and the sociopath in zodiac in 2007?)— its rich character building through cinema
  • Everything is properly (such economy- this thing is 98 minutes) built formally in the screenplay- the big real estate fight between Macy’s weasel and Harve Presnell’s bully is laying the framework for the same thing happening with the kidnapping/random
  • Form in the screenplay “little guy” and “kind of funny looking” repetition. Talking weather and mannerisms in Midwestern politeness
  • The coen’s clearly have an admiration and love for Marge. She is very good at her police work
  • As much as we talk about McDormand—and rightly so—I think it’s the shining moment for Macy without a doubt and Buscemi is only arguable in reservoir dogs but I’d take him here
  • What smacked me in the face with this viewing (probably about #10) is the stunningly gorgeous reoccurring shots of snow-filled parking lots and that fence scene. It’s architecture as character and not something I see much in the coen’s filmography. It blew me away
  • A strong meditation on greed, chance/fate—“there’s more to life than a little bit of money. Don’t you know that?”- that’s the real ending in the car. Should have been it.
  • A Masterpiece