What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1996

The Year: 1996
What the Nominees Were: The English Patient, Fargo, Jerry Maguire, Secrets and Lies, Shine
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: Sayles’ greatest film Lone Star should’ve taken Jerry Maguire’s spot. Robert Altman turned in his last masterpiece with Kansas City, but that got ignored too.

What Did Win: The English Patient
How It’s Aged: Ever since “Seinfeld” took aim at it, it’s been a bit of a punching bag, the shorthand example of an art-film winner that leaves wider audiences cold. I think it’s fine, but not as good as…

What Should’ve Won: Fargo
How Hard Was the Decision: As much as I love Secrets and Lies, Lone Star and Kansas City, this was pretty easy. Fargo is one of the best movies ever made.

Director: Joel Coen
Writers: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Stars: Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Harve Presnell, Peter Stormare

The Story: Minneapolis car dealer Jerry Lundegaard hires two goons to kidnap his wife in order to get the ransom out of his father-in-law, but everything goes wrong. Very-pregnant small-town policewoman Marge Gunderson catches wind of the crime and settles everything.

Any Nominations or Wins: It won Actress and Original Screenplay. It lost Picture, Director, Supporting Actor for Macy, Cinematography and Editing.
Why It Didn’t Win: This is one of the odder wins, because The English Patient was not a juggernaut, critically or commercially …but it was a Miramax movie. For the first time, the dreaded name of Harvey Weinstein must be uttered in this series. He launched the first of many masterful campaigns, and squeaked out a win that should have belonged to Fargo.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. Frances McDormand had starred in the Coen Brothers’ first film Blood Simple. She then married Joel. He then a wrote another part that would have been perfect for her, as the lead in Raising Arizona …but he cast Holly Hunter instead. (McDormand ended up with a small role in that movie.) Amazingly, she stayed with Joel, and finally, in 1996, he gave her the role that made her a star (and set her on a path to winning not one, not two, but three Best Actress trophies). Indeed, she is astounding here, handling a thick accent and body-suit, as the keen-eyed, even-keeled, mildly-philosophical heroine. She’s unlike any cop we’ve ever seen onscreen before, and we love her for that.
   
2. Someone asked once on Reddit about Chekov’s guns that never go off, and one of the best answers was Marge’s pregnancy in this movie. We keep expecting her to suddenly go into labor (talk about a complication!) but no, her pregnancy simply proceeds apace from beginning to end, neither affecting nor affected by the plot. Given our sense that all potential plot events must be triggered, it creates a wonderful feeling that this is true, not a made-up story.
3. In fact, the film begins with a title card falsely claiming that it is based on a true story, and I certainly believe it when I first saw it in the theater…After all, who could make this up? Well, the Coens could. Do I feel tricked? Yes, but these are also the pranksters who pretended to be a pretentious critic on Blood Simple’s hilarious DVD commentary. Ultimately, it helps the movie to be fooled because you suspend your sense of story logic. (The story about an insane Japanese woman flying to Minnesota and freezing to death trying to dig up the abandoned ransom money is just an urban legend, thankfully, though it was spun out of a real, tragic suicide.)
4. When you hear that Steve Buscemi has never gotten an Oscar nomination, you search around for one he should have gotten, and you inevitably land on this one, but he couldn’t have competed with the actual nominee Macy (who is even better, and didn’t win either) so unfortunately, Buscemi ends up without a nod, but he is spellbinding in this movie, as the uncircumcised sleazebag who screws everything up.
   
5. The Coen Brothers (born and raised in St. Louis Park, Minnesota) were justly famous for the sense of place in their movies, whether it be Texas, Arizona, or Hollywood, but had not explored their own home state. It frequently results in something special when directors who have told every story except their own suddenly return and tell a hometown story. This one has a sense of genuine affection and humanity that was maybe lacking in their more distanced (but nearly perfect) early works.

Ah, 1996: Unfortunately, this has pretty much come true, just in the last year or so.