Fargo

Roger Ebert's review of Fargo. A "great movies" review, also by Roger Ebert.

Regarding the Coen Bros. movie Fargo, Ben Kovitz wrote:

With one exception, I found the type-guessing fairly difficult in this movie.

The one exception was Marge Gunderson, the pregnant police chief who singlehandedly brought in all the bad guys while keeping her husband's spirits up about his painting and always maintaining her own cheerful demeanor. ESTJ. To relate her to Lenore-attitudes, her approach was completely deductive and fact-oriented. But to relate her to Lenore-attitudes much more, she continually put her feelings aside for the sake of her responsibilities as wife and police chief. A classic Lenorean E__J. When Jerry Lundegaard refused to cooperate, she knew exactly what her socially defined powers were and exercised them without hesitation. She knew exactly who to talk to, what the official rules were, and how to call upon the official rules for the sake of her duty to the community. All very dom-Te. She was extraordinarily anchored in facts gathered impersonally--all very STJ. But she showed almost no private interests or curiosities or world of her own, despite the factual orientation. Very secondary-Si. We even see some healthy tertiary Ne (ENFP-style) in the way she finds out-of-the-box reasons to give her husband hope about his painting, e.g. lots of people have to buy small stamps when they raise postage rates.

Jerry Lundegaard: INTP. Clearly this is not a guy whose sense of himself is rooted in community or relationship. Nor, in a classic I__P fashion, does he have any particular sense of who he is. He's sort of following along, irritated that his socially defined relationships (Fe) don't bring him anything he likes, but not sure what else he can do. Ne seems to show up in the way he frequently buys time by finding some new way to complicate the situation by bringing in some new factor. He'a also trying to orchestrate every variable of the kidnapping, which fits the way Lenore describes Ti. In fact, it seems clear that this sort of subtle orchestration of lots of variables is his main modus vivendi. He doesn't show a solid Ne sense of extraverted stake in things, though, because he isn't finding ways to take what comes and change its meaning by adding surprising external elements. He is using Ne adaptation to try to control his situation.

The quiet kidnapper: ISFP. This is mostly a gut read. He seems completely anchored in his own sense of what is pleasurable. While he's not possessive, he has that Fi kind of selfishness--a sort of obliviousness to much else beyond what strikes him as immediately enjoyable. His extraordinary muteness also seems to be a common ISFP trait. He has the utter realism of an Se attitude. Perhaps his strange imperviousness to anyone else's thoughts or opinions results from tertiary Ni. Another way his ISFP-ishness might show up is the way he got hooked by soap operas. Soap operas seem to me a very ISFP-oriented art form, filled with simple clashes between people each striving to fulfill themselves. The conflicts mostly center on the characters' personal relationships and their need to be seen as attractive. Each scene goes like this: someone says something that makes someone else feel good or feel bad. Ooooh! How will that person respond? And back and forth it goes, these sorts of exchanges being seen as the stuff of life.

Shep Proudfoot: ISFP. Not much to go on here, but he has that ISFP muteness. Notice that when he comes to beat up Steve Buscemi, there is no sense that he is acting in the name of impersonal justice. He is acting to protect his own private interests. He does it not because it's "right" but because it's *him*. That in itself doesn't suggest Fi, but in combination with the clearly IS_P "artisan" orientation, perhaps it does. What seems to bother him is not that Buscemi violated his natural rights, but that Buscemi was such a clod that it caused Shep trouble. "I'm out for myself, you're out for yourself, we're all unique and that's ok, but c'mon, we've got to find an intelligent way to get along" seems to me to be a typical SP attitude.

Steve Buscemi: ISTP. Notice the Ti appeal to what makes sense over the rules in his encounters with parking-lot attendants. Notice also the inferior-Fe-ish claims to obligations owed him by others--obligations that no one else recognizes. He's another orchestrator. Some arguments for an Se attitude are what seems to be a strong desire to appear "cool", his need for constant action, his need to make a strong impact on whoever he meets, and his appetite for high-intensity sex. If Se is right, his need for control would make him an ISTP. Clearly he tries to rule each situation with logic. He sort of wants logic to prevail, though it's his own idiosyncratic understanding of logic. "You fuckin' shot me!" How dare the father bring a gun to defend his daughter and his money. Notice the complete lack of empathy. Notice the appeal to an impersonal sense of justice that he sees as pervading everything, and why can't these idiots around me see that and go along with it? There is a way that things are supposed to go, and this ain't it.

ISTP doesn't seem right to me (but neither does any type) for Steve, but here's an semi-supportive observation: during the rather unconvincing sex scene when Steve protests to Shep, "Hey, I'm banging this chick!", I had a flashback to the Dude's "Careful, man, there's a beverage involved here" (something like that) in The Big Lebowski. The humor in both is how utterly irrelevant honoring the victim's little environment is to their aggressors. This suggests introversion (and maybe Ti) as Ben characterized it in TBL, but I'm still leaning toward Steve maybe being a rather sick and ineffectual ENTJ. As opposed to a sick but effective ENTJ like Walter. --Robbie

Actually, I've also been thinking ENTJ for the Steve Buscemi character as another hypothesis. He's utterly inconsiderate, steamrollering over anything that doesn't meet his criteria of how things should be. The first time we see him, he's hammering on Jerry's failure to meet the agreed-upon time when when they were to meet. When he meets a situation that requires him to look at things differently, he responds by calling upon gut-level responses to show his anger without regard for consequence or social appropriateness, which would be tertiary or even inferior Se. Maybe he's an INTJ acting out his Incredible Hulk shadow. --Ben Kovitz

There's the scene with the two villains driving to St. Paul, with Steve getting pissed off at his silent accomplice, the obvious sub-text from the screen writer being, "Look, Steve is the out-going but clumsy one of the duo, while _____ is the strong, silent, and deadly type."

What kind of function attitude would lead Steve to point to the bloody, right half of his face that is about to fall off if he lets go of it as the deciding factor in who deserves the Sierra? (Which he had previously pointed out could not be split in half.) That seems vaguely Fi-like to me. Is he appealing to empathy? (Of course he's saying, "I've suffered more than you in all this--nevermind if most of my injuries are due to my own stupidity.)

His trademark phrase: "I don't want to debate you."

Appealing to mercy is surely about as un-Te as you can possibly get. The bottom line is the deal, and each partner's negotiating position right now. A bloody jaw is not an appeal to someone's self-interest. From a Te perspective, the fact that he is injured is no claim on anyone else. Any serious ETJ could tell you that. From a Te perspective, your difficulties, whether self-made or not your fault, are perhaps a basis for charity but not a negotiating position that anyone needs to take seriously.

Could he be an ESFP?

Another example of Steve's denseness is how in the course of the movie, his mental model of what makes his sidekick tick doesn't seem to evolve. Anyone with half a brain would start getting a bit cautious around that guy, who obviously doesn't have a shred of humanity in him. Only an idiot would argue with a psychopath about the Sierra in that last scene. Throughout the movie he just kept pushing him and pushing him.

Perhaps what's happened is that both kidnappers were caught in an inability to harmonize dominant and inferior functions. At the end, the ISFP kidnapper hauls out an axe with an air of, "Nothing personal but I have to kill you." (Joe Butt uses that line to illustrate ENTJs.) The ENTJ kidnapper who's been taking anything he wants because he wants it, viewing everyone else as hopelessly illogical, gets himself killed by appealing to mercy...to an ISFP who can't give it.

Wade (Jerry's father-in-law): ESTP. Very canny, analytical (Ti), but utterly realistic and pragmatic in that dom-Se way. Oriented to the visible status-oriented things that his culture has defined: the wealth, the power, the clothes, the car, etc. Trusts and acts on his instinctive reactions in that SP way.

Jerry's wife: ISFJ. Stereotypical.

Was there a theme to this movie? "Kidnapping and murder in SJ-land"? "This is what happens when you fuck a loved one in the ass"?