Fargo is a beautiful, and ugly, movie.

The frigid landscape itself was a character. The snow and cold was a blanket of tranquility covering a seething underbelly of repressed angst, dysfunctional discontent.

Marge Gunderson (played beautifully by Frances McDormand, who won an Oscar for this performance) is everything right with life. She's capable, confident, accountable, yet soft-spoken. She's salt of the earth people. Her life is quiet, with little drama, and she'd prefer it that way. She and her husband Norm (played with utter gentleness by John Carroll Lynch) live simply, and enjoy the simplest in life, together, with not a violent, nor vile, bone in their bodies.

Into their simple, quiet lives, comes a storm of malevolence...but, from within. From one of their own genteel, uber-polite, Scandinavian stock, Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy as perhaps his most hateful role) is a mess. Beneath the veneer of civility belies a boiling tempest. He's in debt, desparate for a buck, and calls on some loathsome people to help out with a plan that could only fail, miserably. before spiralling into the most grisly bloodbath this serene landscape may have ever had the misfortunte of enduring.

Innocent people die. Miserable people die. Evil people die. The blood flows and flies like it's going out of style...until Marge - all five-foot-nothing, seven-months pregnant of her - puts a stop to the carnage.

Her power is not bravado, testosterone, muscles, gritted teeth, car chases and explosions...her power was the dignity of humility, truth, right.

Her voice when speaking with the murderous perp she has single-handedly taken into custody is as delicate as the petal of a lily. Even though it was clear as the nose on his face that he had lost all humanity, she speaks to him with the even-toned reasoning of a parent to a child who's old enough to know better. "All of this for...what? A little money? And where did it get you? Don't you know there's more to life than money?"

This movie reminds us that there's a lot of evil out there, and that simple people could be just a bad string of luck from exploding (so, for your own sake, do be kind, you never know who's on their last nerve); and also, that there are decent people out there who know that there's more to life than money.

PS The sound of Jerry's caterwauling when he was finally arrested was so disgusting to me I was hoping to see the cops rough him up to shut him TF up. His utter lack of a moral compass had him thinking he ought to escape, to be free...but, to go where, to do what? His bankruptcy - nearly financial, and fully moral - caused a lot of innocent bloodshed, and I'd have liked to see his dumb ass held accountable for the mess he created. At least, he did get arrested so we can hope justice got rammed down his throat.