Round and Square: Beginnings (9)

From Round to Square (and back)

For The Emperor's Teacher, scroll down (↓) to "Topics." It's the management book that will rock the world (and break the vase, as you will see). Click or paste the following link for a recent profile of the project: http://magazine.beloit.edu/?story_id=240813&issue_id=240610

A new post appears every day at 12:05* (CDT). There's more, though. Take a look at the right-hand side of the page for over four years of material (2,000 posts and growing) from Seinfeld and country music to every single day of the Chinese lunar calendar...translated. Look here ↓ and explore a little. It will take you all the way down the page...from round to square (and back again).
*Occasionally I will leave a long post up for thirty-six hours, and post a shorter entry at noon the next day.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Beginnings (9)—Fargo

Click here for an introduction to the Round and Square series "Beginnings."

[a] Opening scene

[b] Fargo

Fargo has one of the best cinematic openings I have ever seen. The scene begins in an understated (to say the least) manner, and then builds slowly (note the growing tympanic effects) as the scene comes into view. The music explodes, as it were, with a triumphant scene of...a car towing another car.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLZ-C8DJv74&feature=related

[c] Unintended consequences

From there, Jerry is off to meet Carl and Gaear at the King of Clubs in Fargo. The rest is cinematic reverie. It is now worth watching the entire first six minutes of the film (and seeing the triumphant car-pulling again all over again), in order to get the full effect—including the transition from Carter Burwell's opening musical composition to Merle Haggard singing "Big City." This is, by the way, one of the best soundtracks I have ever heard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI_4wvBHkrw&NR=1

Watch the scene (pardon the advertising, but this is YouTube, after all), and think about how even the earliest shreds of dialogue already start to show the unraveling ("seemed like a good idea at the time") plan and various laws of unintended consequences.