Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,613
Written 7/8/10
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Buy it... if you are absolutely prepared for the sparse, solemn
demeanor of Carter Burwell's highly effective but depressing
fiddle-defined score.
Avoid it... if you expect the score to convey any of the black
humor of the film, because Burwell's intent was to play Fargo
with a serious, morbid tone despite the strangely lyrical nature of his
adapted title theme.
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| Burwell |
Fargo: (Carter Burwell) Black comedies, especially
those as sick as Joel and Ethan Coen's Fargo, are rarely
universally acclaimed by critics and destined for box office success.
But the visual of seeing one man shove another through a wood-chipper
was just one of the reasons the 1996 film became a monumental hit. The
Coen brothers nailed the comedy element by playing the ridiculous
atmosphere of their plot as seriously as possible, even stirring up some
controversy by claiming that the story was based on true events (debate
about the legitimacy of that claim has always remained). A pregnant
police chief from Minnesota investigates a string of crimes that leads
back to a local car dealer who has hired a pair of thugs to kidnap his
wife and demand a ransom from her rich father. Not everything goes as
planned on the way to the wood-chipper, however, and nearly everyone in
the cast is either killed or arrested. More important than the story is
the Coens' portrayal of people and locations from Minnesota and North
Dakota, an arguably unflattering bloating of anything denoting
Scandinavian origins and the formidably bleak environment. Everything
about Fargo is grim, and yet it is the homely affability of the
film that lends it a sense of charm. Also playing the story with an
absolutely serious tone was composer Carter Burwell, who has been a
regular collaborator with the Coens for three decades. His intent was to
capture what he deemed "the desperate cheerfulness" of the characters,
serving up a sparse score that is strangely lyrical while at the same
time depressingly alienating in its simple instrumentation. By
addressing the crime drama with a score equally morbid, it in turn
accentuates the comedy of the hapless story. Intriguingly, he once
compared his work for Fargo to Miklós Rózsa's small
orchestral music for the 1946 low-budget crime film The Killers.
He was keenly aware that Fargo makes significant cultural
references (beyond even the famous spoken accents taught to the cast
members by a dialect coach), and he therefore started researching
Scandinavian folk music before the film was far along. He settled on the
use of the hardanger fiddle as the primary instrumental identity and
sculpted his title theme for the film after a Norweigan folk tuned
called "The Lost Sheep." The melody of that song is traditionally quite
beautiful, but Burwell altered its progressions and tone to match the
less enticing atmosphere of the bizarre circumstances on screen.
There are two themes utilized by Burwell for
Fargo, both defined as much by their precise instrumentation as
they are their melodies. The adapted folk tune was originally intended
by the composer to apply only to the car dealer (William H. Macy), but
after determining that its inherent sadness was a suitable match for the
entire film, he expanded its references out to several characters. On
album, the theme's major performances exist in the "location cues" (the
three titled after locations in the plot), conveyed sparsely to remind
the audience of the characters' inferiority to the surrounding
landscape. During these cues, harp and celesta performances eventually
lead to the hardanger fiddle on top of the full orchestral ensemble (and
almost humorously merry sleigh bell rhythms, possibly created here with
tambourines). The hardanger's multiple simultaneous tones occasionally
give it the sound of an accordion, which may as well have been employed
given its source placement on screen. The primary theme's reminders in
the rest of the score are welcome, such as the grim clarinet solos in "A
Lot of Woe" and fiddle extensions in "The Mallard." The other musical
identity in
Fargo is a simple waltz with a strangely jazzy
baseline for electric bass and tapped percussion, a touch of sleaze for
the two kidnappers. Likely due to this theme's performance in "Dance of
the Sierra" (following "Moose Lake" and "The Ozone"), Burwell was
lightly accused by author Krin Gabbard of associating the white
criminals' bad behavior with African American stereotypes, an
interesting but perhaps overreaching assertion in this context. The
theme takes on more straight forward symphonic power in "Forced Entry"
and its final performance, "Paul Bunyon." An associated percussive
clicking for the kidnapping plot sets a bland, but effective pace in
"Forced Entry" and "Delivery." Outside of the thematic references, the
score offers little to satisfy you on album. Long, deep bass tones and
pitch-defying dissonance dominates cues like "The Trooper's End" and
"The Eager Beaver." The only significant exception is "Rubbernecking,"
which runs with the villains' theme and bloats its rhythm to
Conspiracy Theory levels. The album for
Fargo features
tracks with long, silent breaks in them and follows the score with the
far more challenging, sound effects-riddled music for
Barton Fink
that Burwell wrote for the Coen brothers half a decade earlier. While
there is something undeniably alluring about the solemn main theme for
Fargo, the depressingly heavy score isn't as appealing on album
and should be approached with caution.
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- Music as Written for the Film: ***
- Music as Heard on Album: **
- Overall: ***
Bias Check:
For Carter Burwell reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.84
(in 19 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.82
(in 11,704 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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