White-out conditions bracket the outskirts at Fargo, a warmhearted tale of cold-blooded murder from the brothers Coen, director Joel and producer Ethan. The opening shot sketches the color scheme: barely discernible through overcast skies and blowing snow, a lone vehicle tows a tan Cutlass Ciera along a God-forsaken strip of highway, a tableau echoed at the end of the film when another car carries its cargo, a sullen murderer, to justice. Front, back, and in between, snow is the dominant visual motif, subzero temperatures the environmental wraparound, a blizzard of white stuff that layers the landscape and fills the frames of pre-cable television screens. Fargo mixes a film noir ethos with film blanc visuals.

Set in rural Minnesota in the dead of winter (the place name “Fargo” is the least of the calculated misdirections), when the Siberian Express comes sweeping down from Canada, gathering velocity and ferocity, to settle in with bone-numbing, mind-twisting cold, the film luxuriates in seasonal and regional atmosphere. Though a goodly chunk of the nation regularly withstands such polar conditions, the culture of life-threatening winter is seldom glimpsed in American films, perhaps because the rituals of scraping ice off the windshield, praying for the ignition to turn over, wearing headgear for protection (not style) and fur as a survival (not fashion) statement are alien to sun-drenched Hollywood honchos who can wait all day for the light but run like rabbits from frozen precipitation.