EPIC FILM SPINS URBAN LEGEND INTO TREASURE
Kikuchi shines in her search for Fargo’s fictional cash stash
Perhaps you’ve heard this one.
In 2001, a 29- year- old female office worker from Tokyo, Takako Konishi, was found dead in a field near Fargo, N. D. She’d come looking for the treasure buried in a field by Steve Buscemi’s character in Fargo, the 1996 movie that begins: “This is a true story.”
Fargo isn’t a true story, and neither is the tale of Konishi. A 2003 documentary by Paul Berczeller ( This Is a True Story) tells how she was depressed and probably decided to end her life in a place that reminded her of a former lover from America. Urban legends, however, live longer than logic.
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, is based on the myth, and director and co- writer David Zellner cleaves to the mythic.
Kumiko works as an “office lady,” although as her mother and boss keep reminding her, 29 is far too old for anything but starting a family. Slovenly and surly, she’s barely responsive to even the simplest requests made of her at work.
At home, it’s a different story. With only her bunny, Bunzo, for company, she watches her tape of Fargo so obsessively that it’s become stretched, full of static, its soundtrack warped and warbling. By calculating the distance between fence posts using Buscemi as a ruler ( 69 inches equals exactly one Buscemi) and through other clues, Kumiko figures she knows where the money is.
When she visits the library to steal a map of the Fargo area from an atlas, she’s caught. The guard wants to know why she didn’t just make a photocopy. She answers: “I’m willing to make it worth your while.” Then she offers the guard a handful of change. In the end, he rips out the page containing the map and hands it over, just to be rid of her.
The film is full of such wonky moments and snatches of dark humour, especially in the second half, once Kumiko has stolen her boss’ credit card and hightailed it to Minneapolis, a mere 400 kilometres from Fargo.
Travelling through Minnesota with a needlepoint treasure map and a meagre command of English, she meets many simple, well- meaning folk including a bus driver with carpal tunnel, a deaf taxi driver and a retiree who looks like Marge Gunderson’s second cousin.
Local colour aside, Kikuchi is the film’s make- or- break fulcrum, and she’s perfect in the role, completely unselfconscious and fully believable.
It’s an unforgiving role, for it amounts to a buttress, propping up the film’s recursive efforts to tell us a story about the stories we tell ourselves, and about the impossibility of ever fully realizing any desire that’s rooted in fiction — and aren’t they all? Fargo begets a farce, which turns out to be fiction, but the very real death inspires a new cycle of make- believe.
The film’s closing scene will make you want to both laugh and weep. And, is it any wonder?