Fargo is a movie built upon a lie. It's bogus, hokum, a sham, not to mention completely and utterly brilliant. The lie starts with a title card at the beginning of the film, which somberly announces, "The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred." Now, in hopes of snookering a whole new crowd of viewers, you'll find those same words where a synopsis should appear on the back of the newly released special-edition DVD.

Do not believe them. The first time I saw Fargo, things had spun completely out of control by the time I realized that I'd been hoodwinked by those rascally Coen boys (brothers Joel and Ethan, who make all of their films together). But being fooled was more than half the fun, and if you're duped the first time through, count yourself among the blessedly gullible. Disguised as a true-crime film, Fargo is two hours of pure fiction caught up in a Midwestern blizzard, and yet it reveals the most incisive portrait of American life I've ever seen on film.

To newcomers, the movie seems to be characterized by stretches of excruciatingly mundane encounters punctuated by bursts of ultraviolence -- a brutal roadside execution, a seemingly random home kidnapping, a bloody shootout atop a snow-covered parking garage and, ultimately, the infamous "wood-chipper scene." Between such flare-ups, we follow Marge Gunderson (Best Actress winner Frances McDormand) as she patiently tutors her greenhorn partner or as she questions two hookers about "what these fellas looked like" or (in the film's best scene) as she sits down for an uncomfortable reunion with a former classmate. The first time through, bloodthirsty audiences must feel like they're slogging through a snow drift in search of that $40,000 the goons bury beside a random highway fencepost. Meanwhile, mild-mannered moviegoers are left with mouths agape, trying to make sense of what all the carnage could possibly mean.

Perhaps the most startling revelation comes at the moment it clicks that the Coens actually expect you to laugh along with their tale of Midwestern mayhem. As far as the filmmakers are concerned, they've told their story with a straight-face, and yet the characters and situations, however genuine, seem so outrageous. They tap into an uncomfortable zone of humor, where a corpse can be lying facedown in the snow and yet we're compelled to laugh when the pregnant police detective says, "I think I'm gonna barf."

But what makes Fargo so brilliant, I think, is that it's not about the crime at all. Sure, all the criminals get what's coming to them in the end, but after everything's squared away, the Coens take us back into Marge's bedroom for the last scene of the movie, where she lies with her husband Norm watching late-night television. He's an artist, a philatelic painter, and he's disappointed that his portrait of a flying mallard was picked for the three-cent stamp, rather than the postal rate everyone uses. Listening to Marge cheer him up, you realize that in her life, this scenario is just as important as tracking down the killers she's spent the whole movie chasing. That's her day job, but this is her life.

Considering the details the Coens choose to include, it all seems credible, which just goes to support all that "true story" baloney. Surely there's a man out there desperate enough to ransom his own wife for cash, and no doubt it would all play out something like this. Truth, indeed, is stranger than fiction, and by now, the Coen brothers have surely proven that they can be even stranger than truth.

[as featured on Moviefone.com]