So, last night I watched Fargo (the original movie, not the show) with the kids. It's been over 20 years since I last saw it and DAMN did it hit me different/harder this time. It is profound about humanity, about good & evil, in ways I didn't really appreciate before.

I think when I first saw it, I took the "bad guy" to be the anomaly in need of explanation -- a red streak of pure evil against the bland white background of upper midwest Normal. I thought that contrast was the center of the movie. This time around, though ...

... a different contrast struck me, namely the simple kindness & decency of Marge & Norm against the backdrop of a Normal mostly populated by people like Jerry Lundegaard -- not evil, really, just petty & shortsighted, an unwitting enabler of evil.

The point, at least as it struck me last night, is that Marge/Norm's goodness is just as inexplicable, just as basic & indivisible a fact of the universe, as Grimsrud's evil. Neither can be decomposed or explained; both are, in their own ways, miracles.

It's so perfectly captured in the final scene in the patrol car, with Marge's immortal quote: "And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well. I just don't understand it." Neither of them can explain or defend what they are, or why they are. At some point you just hit bedrock.

Anyway, to wrap this up, I guess the last few years have heightened my appreciation for simple kindness & decency, which I used to take much more for granted. They're not as loud, flashy, or *cinematic* as evil, not the stuff of grand drama (Norm just makes Marge breakfast) ...

... but they are all that saves us from it. They are a fact about humanity just as much as our capacity to harm one another. In times like these, even those small moments of grace are worth noticing & celebrating. That's what I take Fargo to be saying, and I say, amen. </fin>