Year of the independents.

• Author: Sharrett, Christopher

In an age when the commercial entertainment industry steadily is solidifying its grip on the art of the cinema, it frequently is tough to imagine that there actually is an alternative to the hightech, heavily ballyhooed seasonal blockbusters that make up multiplex fare. However, even as viewers' imaginations were colonized further by the likes of "Eraser," "Independence Day," and similar cinematic rollercoaster rides, audiences could be heartened that some of the most noticeable and talked-about recent films were relatively low-budget dramas made by people who doggedly toil at building reputations while working on Hollywood's margins. Joel and Ethan Coen, John Sayles, Mike Leigh, and Jim Jarmusch, among others, have been around for years, but seldom have moviegoers been more grateful that their idiosyncratic, personal films are available as a respite from the junk food diet of the mainstream production industry.

By late 1996, talk was rampant that if there still is a concept of justice in this world, Joel and Ethan Coen's "Fargo" would be this year's prime Academy Award contender. This modest yet expansive little picture may be the summary statement about the U.S. at the end of the American Century, as surely as John Ford's works celebrated America's emergence as a major world power.

I first saw this film while at an academic conference in Las Vegas. The venue seemed extraordinarily appropriate, since the Coen brothers' meditation on the banality of evil could be produced only by a culture that built a city designed to laud the very concept. The story concerns a smarmy used car salesman named Jerry Lundegaard (William Macy) in financial trouble. He plots the kidnapping of his wife, assuming that his domineering father-in-law will spring for the ransom with nary a qualm. The salesman hires a team of gunsels (including the ubiquitous Steve Buscemi, now competing with Joe Pesci as the cinema's resident psycho), whose sadism is far outstripped by their incompetence. About halfway into the narrative, we are introduced to Margie, the pregnant police chief of Brainerd, Minn., a role, played by Frances McDormand, that not only will redefine the crime genre, but offer an entirely new avenue for so-called "action parts" for women. Struggling with morning sickness, sub-zero temperatures, and the worries of her artist husband--with whom she enjoys a sweet relationship--Margie cracks the case.

"Fargo" may represent a 1990s neorealism, in that so much of...