Chatter about the confidence of Game of Thrones has been transposed most recently by an increased volume of talk about the show’s depiction of violence, particularly sexual violence towards its female characters, which is sure to get its share of attention in the coming week once again after the Craster’s Keep scene in tonight’s episode. What I hope doesn’t go unnoticed, or under-appreciated, is that quality that is becoming more markedly unique to this series, which is usually described in the shorthand term of “confidence.”
Once their widespread jubilation over last week’s dire climactic moment had subsided, Game of Thrones viewers turned their attention to the big question of who orchestrated the deadly poisoning of the poor departed King Joffrey? This week's episode, “Breaker of Chains,” is cleverly designed to provide some answers as well as some further complications to this mystery.
Joel and Ethan Coen, despite the fact that they are a duo, are a singular force in modern cinematic history. That is to say, if you’ll forgive the grammatical confusion, there is only one Coen Brothers. Their outstanding 1996 film is equally singular, despite the fact that there is now a fantastic TV series that shares both its title and geographical setting: FX’s Fargo.
This was one of those Game of Thrones episodes that ends so shockingly and perfectly that it’s easy to forget how tremendously executed the preceding 45 minutes were. “The Lion and the Rose” will be remembered—like “The Rains of Castamere” and “Baelor”—as “that episode where that really big, important thing happened at the end.” In other words, it’s the type of episode you really don’t want to read about on Twitter or elsewhere before seeing it for yourself, because having one of the few satisfying game-changing moments from this series spoiled for you would be almost enough to dampen one’s mirth over the fact that one of television’s most loathed characters received a send-off worthy of his loathsomeness.
Having been raised in a Christian household, and a relatively devout one, the stories of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament were ingrained in me from a very young age. Or so I thought. I later learned that the stories I thought I knew from childhood were merely family-friendly versions of some rather grim mythological material—the Disney versions of scripture, if you will. In some instances, there were some disturbing details I was aware of but didn’t fully grasp, such as Abraham being manipulated into sacrificing his only child and then having the rug pulled out from beneath him; in others, there were particulars completely omitted because they’re not at all suitable for children, such as Abraham’s nephew Lot being date raped by his two daughters.
The examples of actors who have gone on to direct films are presumably rather widely known. You have your Afflecks, your Eastwoods, your Jolies and numerous others. Screenwriters may be somewhat less famous when they try their hands at directing their own features, but there are many of these too, such as Charlie Kaufman, Shane Black, and Paul Schrader, to name but a few.
If the best advice a storyteller can follow is indeed to “write what you know,” then no one should be offended any time there’s a movie made about the movie industry, or about the experience of watching movies, or about some period of movie history. Filmmakers are understandably primarily concerned with film, and as their main area of interest, it should be no surprise that it’s a subject that a large number of films are deeply interested in, or at least touch upon.
There’s an art to cursing. When done well, it can provide dialogue with added emphasis, intensity, aggression, or rebelliousness. Pop culture seems to have transitioned relatively quickly from foul language being seen as taboo and worthy of censorship to its use being seen as an effective tool and worthy of praise for its level of creativity. There are certain writers and directors that seem to throw caution regarding censorship to the wind and become known for their expletive-heavy films. But the performers who we get to see and hear using this colorful language possess the voices that we typically associate with our favorite movie curse words, and scenes that employ said curse words. Those who exercise this theatrical muscle the best are unsurprisingly some of the most widely appreciated performers in the business.
Movies are more than simply storytelling. It’s often tempting to focus exclusively on the story aspect of cinematic storytelling at the expense of the telling. It’s true that popular feature length movies are almost uniformly concerned with the unfolding of a narrative, but part of the pleasure of watching often comes from the familiarity or strangeness of a world we’re being immersed in. Sometimes this is done in beautiful, artful, and understated ways, and that’s great. What’s unfortunate is when equally beautiful and artful work is dismissed as spectacle or shallow entertainment, because the best of this kind of filmmaking exposes us to a way of seeing and experiencing cinema that’s different and interesting.
Pauline Kael famously stated that she would never watch a movie twice for critical purposes, because she “got it” the first time. Either this is why she was a master of film criticism while the rest of us are just schmucks, or her staunchness of opinion was a weakness, its influence on contemporary criticism apparent in the continued presentation of movie reviews as objective, eternal reports rather than evaluations of subjective art appreciation. Probably some combination of both.
