Game of Thrones: Learning to use "The Pointy End"

As I noted in my first post about this course, one of the signal elements of high fantasy as a genre is the presence of a coming-of-age narrative, and Game of Thrones is clearly no exception. "The Pointy End," in fact, delivers three distinct moments in which a character is provided an opportunity to take a significant step in his or her maturation process. (It actually contains more than three, but only three of the characters take advantage of the opportunity provided and I want to focus on them.) We'll begin with Arya Stark, who as the episode opens is literally practicing at life:

The balanced long shot employed by director Daniel Minihan has the effect of bringing a sense of calm to this fencing lesson. Arya and her instructor, Syrio Forel, are playing at combat in a manner as elegant as this shot is composed. Note that Arya moves between the third arch from frame-left, while Syrio strikes at her from the third arch from frame-right. If this is fighting, it is unlike the brutal art being performed outside this very room at this very point in time:

This violence is sloppily composed, with the elements of the background functioning as mere backdrop to the slaughter before them. The characters rush into and out of focus as jagged edits push and pull the viewer from one point in the mise-en-scene to another seemingly without reason. I say "seemingly" because the disorientation is clearly the point. Not being able to tell who is and isn't on "the pointy end" is why Minihan cuts from the above to:

To here only after this skirmish concludes. The Lannister guards have a dispatched a man who lies helpless, dying if not already dead, and Minihan makes his suffering seem insignificant by shooting it from a high angle with canted framing. The canted framing is important because it keeps the shot uncomfortable even after the initial confusion is resolved. ("So that is who was on the pointy end.") The deliberately awkward composition of the previous two frames and the frantic editing that transitioned one to the next leads to a clash not just between characters in the show but the formal elements of its direction. When the Lannister guards confront Syrio and Arya, the shot maintains most of its initial balance:

It is slightly altered because the circumstances of the characters it had framed has altered. The fight that follows, then, will be between both the characters and their attendent compositions. Here, it seems as if Syrio and Arya have the upper hand: they occupy the center of the frame and the slightly low angle of framing makes them appear slightly more dominant than the figures in the background. (Who are the same height, relative to the frame, as Arya at this point.) This is Arya's moment—the point in her coming-of-age narrative in which she puts her training into practice—or it would be if not for the fact that

...you killed his father. Prepare to die. He obviously doesn't say that, but this clearly is his moment, the one he for which he has prepared his entire life: he will take on multiple armed and armored guards with a wooden practice sword. How does he fare?

Quite well. Note that unlike the earlier scenes with the guards, which employed quick edits and canted angles, here Minihan uses a tracking shot to follow Syrio as he dances his way through the fight. In terms of composition, so long as Syrio retains the upper hand the pans will be gentle and the takes long. Whoever commands the scene dictates how it will be shot. Which makes its final long shot especially poignant:

The composition suggests that no matter how this fight ends—and given that it ends off-frame the outcome, however strongly implied, remains unknown—Syrio's composure will allow him to win the moral victory. Cold comfort, obviously, but it's what he's imparted to Arya during these lessons. When her moment finally comes, she will decide with the same steadiness of mind and control of body as Syrio displays here.

Or not. Arya's first kill is shot through with the same chaotic editing that characterized those of the Lannister guards. Minihan begins with a close-up of Arya yelling and thrusting, cuts to a medium long shot of her still yelling and stabbing, then reverses to a medium shot of her slipping the knife in his belly, then reverses to a medium close-up on Arya's face as she finishes yelling and realizes what she's done, then reverses one last time to the boy's face before panning down to his belly. All in less than three seconds. The grace that accompanied Syrio to his likely end is nowhere evident in this moment, meaning that whatever she did here, she didn't put in practice what Syrio had taught her.

So what did she learn here? What significant development in her coming-of-age narrative did she achieve? I'm not entirely sure. She killed someone, which is surely a moment for sour reflection. She learned that running in the face of death is sometimes better than dying with honor, but she also learned that there's honor in dying with dignity, and while those lessons aren't contradictory, they certainly aren't complementary. What I appreciate about the way these scenes were set up is that they clearly mark important moments in her development, but decline to provide the audience with a pat moral statement of what exactly was developed. (The most extreme cases of which being the once ubiquitous "very special episodes" of sitcoms which weren't "special," much less "very.") In other words, Minihan's provided us with a moment of precise ambiguity, in which we know that something momentous has happened but can't easily decipher what exactly it was.

Tomorrow I'll continue to channel my inner New Critic by doing readings of Robb Stark and Dany's similarly ambiguous developmental milestones.

Comments

[mxyzptlk]

Could you argue that Syrio is also demonstrating how to kill with dignity, and that's a lesson Arya still has yet to learn? Dying with dignity is a theme that pervades both the series and the novels, but it seems that its mirror twin, killing with dignity, is just as important -- think back to Ned's decapitation of Will. (Arguably, though, it doesn't get people very far.)

What you've noted here is almost like mickey-mousing, but with the action keyed to the composition of the shot structure rather than the music. It's kind of similar to the pool hall fight in Mean Streets, sans Mr. Postman playing on a medieval jukebox. (I guess that'd be Mr. Ravenman.)

One of the interesting choices made in this scene is to not show Syrio getting killed. This chapter in the novel is of course from Arya's perspective, and she has no way of knowing what actually happens in the room after she runs away on Syrio's command (What do we say to the god of death? Not today.) We know Syrio is a Braavosi, and that's where the Faceless Ones like Jaqen H'ghar come from. Those guys don't die so easily, and even though Syrio hasn't yet re-emerged, I've kind of held out hope he could, maybe with a new face. The way this scene was edited leaves that door open as well.

Just so.

Question: When I was working on my PhD, I couldn't find any studies done on the effects of careful editing such as what you get into on the audience's experience of a film/show/scene. I'm guessing that'd be a cross between reader response criticism and a psychology experiment, where you'd have to have test audiences view different scenes -- some carefully crafted like this, and maybe an action scene from, I dunno, Merlin or something -- and then identify why one scene is more memorable or has more impact than the other. I know that seems completely subjective, but it seems that much of the most iconic and lasting cinematic moments are the ones that are carefully crafted, play with and against convention, and don't just rehash standard Hollywood Style moves. Such careful shot construction must have some effect on the audience's experience of a film beyond just being pretty or interesting, whether the audience recognizes it or not -- it must play on the subconscious viewing experience like careful structure and word choice does in good literature. I understand that those audience effects are already assumed, which is one of the reasons good directors keep stretching the form, but I have yet to see a clinical study showing how form actually plays a concrete role in audience response.

One example for this kind of thing could be Kubrick's establishing shots in Dr. Strangelove. There are three settings, the bomber, the bunker, and the base. Whenever the film cuts to one or the other settings, the establishing shot has something bisecting the horizontal of the screen and something bisecting the vertical: With the plane it's the wings and the tail; in the bunker, it's the seam between the politicians at the table and the big map with a continent providing the vertical bisect; with the base, it's an outside shot with the top of the base bisecting the horizontal and the flagpole bisecting the vertical.

Those horizontal and vertical lines make a cross marking the center of the screen, and that all leads up to the final iconic image of the film, the crosshairs of the bombsite. In effect, Kubrick has been subconsciously prepping the audience for that final scene by establishing a kind of crosshairs structure through the mise-en-scene in each establishing shot. I could be wrong, but it seems that has to play a role in how audiences experience the film, whether they recognize it or not.

I want to see that study, dammit. If not, I want to do it.