The Sound of Evil
IN THE LATEST SEASON OF Fargo,after accidentally killing his deadbeat brother, Minnesota businessman Emmit Stussy gazes in dejection at the bloody corpse. Terror flushes across Emmit’s face before he slowly reaches for his phone. Then a piano starts to play … As the familiar notes of a Beethoven sonata are heard, there’s a cut to darkness. The camera crawls down a shadowy hall, descending into a subterranean lair. There we find the sinister gangster V. M. Varga lying on the floor in a full suit. Emmit is calling for help. But Varga poses a question: “Do you know what Lenin said about Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 23 ? … He said, ‘I know nothing that is greater than the Appassionata. But I cannot listen too often. It affects one’s nerves and makes one want to say kind, stupid things and stroke the heads of those who—living in such a foul hell—can create such beauty. Better to beat the person unmercifully over the head.’ ”
This speech strikes every dissonant chord afflicting classical music’s image in the current cultural psyche. All the jarring themes and associations are here:
• Continental sophistication (a villain quoting a Russian politician on a German composer)
• Condescension
• Severe formality
• Illicit wealth and power (Varga runs a secretive crime syndicate that coerces Emmit into joining a money-laundering scheme)
• Disdainful intelligence
• Violence (not the comic-book carnage of Marvel movies or horror-film gore but slow, sadistically intimate violence meant to make you squirm)
