Opening of "Fargo" Analysis - Marlon

Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1996) is a neo-noir thriller set in the snow-covered town of Fargo, North Dakota. The day-lit exterior shots of the film tend to have a primarily bluish hue, due to the reflective nature of snow, and the film begins with a minute-long extreme long shot showing a car, with another car in tow, driving from far down a road through the thick mist. This is accompanied by a mournful, melancholic non-diegetic soundtrack piece, featuring low string and woodwind instruments, which slowly crescendo as the car nears the camera. 

This long-take shot begins as what appears to be a shot of a blue sky, with a bird soaring in the extreme distance, and as the car gradually becomes visible, this sky shot continues to be seen superimposed over the other shot, as the bird is occasionally seen. Widely spread, small black title credits appear also over this. 

This long-take shot is preceded by a black screen with white text claiming that the film is a true story. While the film is in fact almost entirely fictional, the Coen brothers begin with this text to deliberately create an atmosphere of reality, which they claim allows them to depict more shocking events in the film. 

After this opening shot, the sequence continues to show the cars driving through the lifeless, cold wastelands of the film's setting. A shot which begins as a close shot of the cars driving by and continues to watch as they travel into the hazy distance before fading to black shows the scale of the icy fields, creating an air of hopelessness, and a feeling that any number of horrific crimes could be performed in this place without ever being discovered.

From the faded black, we smash-cut to night shot of the same two cars driving towards a small solitary bar. There are several different light sources in this shot; the rows of street-lights, and the neon signs of the bar. These cast lumpy, odd-looking shadows in the piles of snow, and the setting gains a kind of dirty texture from them. The soundtrack fades, and we are left with the diegetic sounds of muffled music coming from the bar, drawing the viewer mentally into that location so that the story can begin.