Anti-glamorous detective in the spirit of "Fargo" Maggie Moore has already found an analogy with Fargo in 1995. And for me, this is not an accusation of secondaryness, this is praise for the ability to make films without super budgets, superstars and super special effects. In general, a rare case of Marvel cinematography.
'MM(s)' is a detective investigating the murders of two namesakes in a provincial town, two Maggie Moore. At the center of the investigation is the local sheriff, and his rather loose assistant in the field of non-compliance. In parallel with the investigation, the sheriff tries to resolve his personal problems and finally, after several years since the death of his wife, to build a relationship with another woman. And, as happens in movies like Cohen's, at first, these lines are not related.
As in Cohen’s Fargo, there is a leisurely (in a good sense of the word) provincial atmosphere, but with an impeccable tension build-up to the final.
As in Fargo, by the tenth minute of the film, the viewer is shown who is who in this story. So it is necessary according to the director’s plan, because the focus of the audience’s attention is not stimulation of the desire to guess the mystery of the writers, but a demonstration of the nature of evil and how it is easy to dive into and impossible to get out.
As in Fargo, human evil is not expressed in any external attributes, it sits in a person in the same way as kindness, love, fear and appears ordinary, as its carriers are ordinary. Take the most notorious villains from the criminal chronicles, they do not look like jacks Nickolson and hits Ledgers, they lived among us, ordinary spectators, the usual life for us.
As in Fargo, the main character, let’s call him a detective, is not a bright and charismatic character like Holmes, Poiret and other cult detectives known to us, but a simple cop from the outback, for whom the investigation is a routine work, not an exciting adventure. In the morning, a cup of coffee, a tour of the territory, tedious interviews of witnesses and something that is slowly formed at the subconscious level, to help at the right moment, showing some inconsistencies, or reminding us of a detail that we, the audience, specifically showed 20 minutes ago, albeit briefly.
As in Fargo, evil (which has already been talked about, but in a slightly different context) at first seems simple and awkward until it begins to nourish itself and inflate more and more.
Despite the absence of the "super-" mentioned at the beginning, and despite the emphasis placed by the creators on the deliberate mundaneity of everything that happens, "MM(s)" remains a film that does not turn into a pseudo-documentary or a stuffy procedure. The film is twisted not the question, but who is the killer, and twisted the very development of events, in which, contrary to the fact that the killer is known to the viewer from the very beginning, there are unexpected plot twists and a large role is given to the influence of accidents that can turn everything upside down. It is banal, but to express this point can be a hackneyed phrase “ordinary life is always richer than the imagination of the writers”. However, there is a kind of recursion, because it was the writers of MM(s) who figured out how to show how ordinary life is richer than their fantasies. For which they are honored and praised.
I don’t mean to say that this film is deliberately made in an anti-glamorous style, but MM(s) talentedly and gracefully shows how you can shoot interesting non-blockbuster detectives (here you can contrast it not only with the two parts of Knives, but also Death on the Nile, and Murders on the Orient Express of all years and other blockbuster detective genre). And this circumstance in my own eyes adds points to films like Maggie Moore (s).