Confession: I've never understood the value of the movie Fargo. I've never been able to relate. So the setting of Kumiko, the story of a lying, stealing, delusional Japanese girl who becomes obsessed with travelling all the way from Tokyo to freezing Minnesota to find the money suitcase buried in the snow at the end of Fargo, was already a loser to me; I empathize with cinema obsession, not with dysfunctional/psychotic obsession. But this movie achieves the strange goal of successfully portraying that delusional obsession (as A Beautiful Mind did). So be warned: the ending might make you angry.
Update (6/29/2015): Here's a documentary about the real Kumiko. Thank you, Toast.
Mo says:
Like the girl in this movie I believed that Fargo was a true story for a long time. I heard that this movie was based on the true story of a Japanese woman who was found dead after coming to the US to find the treasure buried in the movie Fargo. It does seem like an urban myth, which is just what it proved to be. There is a documentary on Vimeo that tells the real true story but just what caused Takako Konishi to die in the snow will probably never be known.
ReplyDeletehttps://vimeo.com/66512803
Thank you so much, Toast, for the additional info. Up till now I thought the movie (Kumiko) was purely fictional. I'll watch the video you provided very soon.
DeletePS. I really enjoyed the ending :-)
ReplyDeleteI could've guessed you would. Movies like this work as a litmus test to show who are the true movie-lovers.
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