#oh and my bad in advance for anything I forgot / misremembered

[doctormage]

ok ignore the shit quality screenshots but idr my hbo password to login on my phone. ANYWAY. time to be insane. sorry

scene of all time. after all the long aerial shots we get the medium shot w the two of them in profile, w the camera far enough back that we see how they’re in this almost-embrace while the knife is positioned visually bw them:

(side note. personally obsessed w how their arms grasping each other run sorta parallel to the angle of the knife, like their arms—gripped in a bitter, angry echo of their former affection for each other—visually underline the knife, this object that has shattered the distant / passive aggressive politeness with which they treated each other thus far. their anger is made that much worse by the love they used to have. I’m going to eat drywall)

I didn’t remember this, but they actually use a dutch angle twice in the scene: first is when rhaenyra fully registers the knife in alicent’s hand (or at least that’s how I read it) they do a rack focus shot from rhaenyra’s face to the knife:

which imo is not quite as jarring bc it’s a lil further back, rhaenyra is still generally positioned on the left side of the screen, and alicent’s hand—which, for now, visually takes her place as the figure opposite rhaenyra—is still on the right, which continues into the next (VERY ICONIC) shot:

we get the back and forth close-ups, rhaenyra left and alicent right, until this one???? until “now they see you as you are,” when we have the camera tilted at a slight angle again, and rhaenyra closer to the center with alicent on her left (also noticing now how crowded rhaenyra is in the frame, more boxed in by the back of alicent’s head and her hand and the knife than the previous similar shot):

I was always taught it was a rule™ to keep your actors on the same sides of the frame throughout a scene, even thru back-and-forth close ups, so !!! I’m just!! THINKING!!! and thinking extra hard bc they actually DO put rhaenyra FULLY on the left and alicent fully on the right for like a SPLIT second…

…before they switch back (sorry to olivia. no matter how many screenshots I took she always looked like this lmao) for the last close-up:

before the shot goes long / aerial again:

like. idk idk idk. I get the angled shot for the rack focus of the knife, bc that’s definitely like. A Moment. this is not just their long-held anger coming to a head, there is a fucking KNIFE and alicent has it pointed directly in her face

and yeah the second dutch angle doesn’t have to inherently mean anything but it just feels like so much of this scene is uhhhhhhh pretty fucking deliberate, and that one split-second when they have rhaenyra & alicent fully swap spots before alicent lunges will NOT leave me alone !!!

begging someone anyone pls to share their thoughts I’m in analysis withdrawal