Shortly after seeing this movie (somewhat belatedly), I heard a local talk show host interview a couple who had just turned out a new translation of Dante's Inferno.

One feature of the Inferno that was touched on in the interview was the notion that the fraudulent reside at a lower level of Hell than even the murderous. Then, it hit me. That's what Fargo is all about. Like a glowing nuclear core in the bowels of an aircraft carrier, the grandfather, in all his fraudulent glory, is the psychic de facto ringleader of all the malfeasance that takes place in the movie. At the heart of the banal evil of our minor thugs and would-be high rollers (and, for that matter, "normal" people placidly assuming their roles in a "normal" world) is a local leading man of business, a taciturn pillar of the community.

Fargo is a picture of Hell, in the tradition of Dante, a tour de force on the part of the Coens to set this as they did, and one of the best movies ever made.