A Short Note On Episode 6 of Watchmen (Patreon)

Last night’s episode of Watchmen made waves. Of course it did. It was a brazen, tour de force of deep thematic poignance. It wrote the unwritten history of an iconic character, and did so in a way that not only made sense, but in the most powerful way possible. In doing so, it painted the history of American oppression and racial injustice. And if that weren’t enough, it was brought to life with outrageous cinematic verve. But their aesthetic choices also make me want to parse out a number of really complicated catch 22’s about cinematography, story, and the choices we make within each. So let’s get into it.

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Cinematic language is a really weird thing. 

It’s purpose is to emphasize emotion and subtly manipulate the audience into feeling what you want them to feel. But within that use, there’s a catch 22: the most effective stuff that cinema does is invisible. After all, the most powerful tool a filmmaker has at their disposal is just shot reverse shot between two characters. Most don't even consider this a “move," even though it’s the cornerstone of cinema and lets the actors react off on another. The goal is to be seamless: from not noticing a cut, to shifting our focus, to motivating camera movement, to carefully bringing us into a character’s interior feelings, all these invisible techniques take incredible, pain staking work. All in effort to make something seem “easy” and normal to us when it is anything but. And if you do it right, you can make the audience forget about the artifice and get them to swell with emotion and even bawl their eyes out.

Then there's showy cinema. The goal of which is less to notice the behavior of the characters and more to notice the artfulness of the aesthetic and construction. We're talking slick, assured camera moves and gliding sumptuousness. Sometimes there's even gimmicks behind them or an audacious one-shot that will be surely be noticed by the audience. There's a strain of filmmakers who milk these tactics for all their worth (folks like Innaritu, Mendes, Joe Wright). There's even sense of poeticism to their tactics, but the truth is that it sort of blatantly disregards a lot of the basic rules of mise en scene and invisible craft mentioned above. Because in aiming for such slickness, you’re actively removing some of your best tools to create a “singular tone.” And more importantly, it often doesn't communicate the emotion you want to communicate and even puts the viewer at a distance because they often can’t get close to an actor’s face and watch them ping pong between shots. So it renders them an observer versus the one experiencing the drama.

The problem is that showy tactics still “work.” Most specifically because when people who don't necessarily make that art go to measure that art, they go "wow that looks amazing!" It's tangible detail; something that someone can grab onto in comparison to a more invisible choice. So of course the showy choices get “measured” better. There’s even a great joke about the oscars “it’s not best, it’s most.” Meaning most costumes, most editing, etc. And you can look at all of Innaritu's Oscars to prove just how much that "style over substance" approach really works (Also note: I pick on Innaritu as an example largely because he’s the best example of punching up. Not just because of him being critically lauded, but because he also says snide, trite things about genre movies while indicating that his own movies should be watched in temples. I’m not joking).

Here's where things get tricky. Because we're ONLY talking about cinematic language choices, not story choices. So when we go back to last night’s Watchmen, an episode that is absolutely laced front-to-back with powerful story moments and devastating imagery, there are so many ways it goes beyond the question of cinematic realization. Because at it’s very core, it’s brilliant. To the point you could hand a 10 year old an Iphone to film it and probably get something compelling. Okay I’m exaggerating, but I’m trying to make a point. And that point is the acknowledgment that we’re only talking about a very narrow range of what actually has effect on the audience. But I also think it’s an important range to discuss.

Because last nights episode opted on the side of some showy choices. They used a number of beautiful, but needless transitions, and a number of fake cuts and actor substitutions that could have been done a million other ways, but they wanted to keep a lot of these in one shot to… be noticed that they were doing it that way? And all the while, the floaty camera held back and showed it through a long series of one shots. But Hulk! She was going into a memories! It feeling like a floaty dream makes sense!

Now this is where things get even more interesting. Because you’re right! And some of it actually works quite well. But it also needlessly compounds the core point of what she's experiencing / when and why w/r/t to her POV. I’m not saying the episode should have been POV. I mean, GOD NO. I’m just saying it’s constantly mixing up when and where it wants us to feel for what and who, also mixing up the audience as observer, for both of her and the drama. Which means it’s also very subtly putting the audience at a distance. And there are so many moments between the actors where I wanted a close-up, to see their eyes, to see them react off one another. But the rules of the overall choice prevented them from doing so (except for all the time they broke them and went in for close-ups, which are the most effecting moments in the actual episode). To be clear, this also has nothing to do with Stephen Williams, by the way. He’s incredible director who did my favorite episode of the season (space junk). It has to do with the viability of the overall choice and how sometimes I think those choices hurt instead of help.

But in the end. the episode exists as it exists. 

And all I have is a dumb hypothetical. 

Which is this: I believe that using more less-showy filmmaking techniques, no one would be talking about the artifice of the episode, sure. But instead you could have brought us closer to the character's eyes, told so much more in little gestures moments and emphasis, staged relationships and gotten at their interiority instead of through blocking. And by the end? I really believe you could have had everyone bawling their eyes out and truly moving them. 

But as part of the endless catch 22, I like the episode, too. Nothing about this comment is cynically aimed. It’s about looking at how we are effected and why. I had one friend cal lit masterful and want to get stoned and watch it again. They’re not wrong, either! But I believe the comment exactly speaks to the very “watching good aesthetics” versus deep-feeling thing that I’m talking about. But it also gets us to ask, “What the hell is wrong with wanting to watch good aesthetics?” Nothing is wrong with that either! Because in the end this short note is a long way of saying I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with what the episode does.

The point of the hypothetical is to ask questions and get people to think about artistic choices. Behind every shot, every choice, every motive, there is a deeper question of function that invites us into larger understanding. And when we come at cinema asking the “why,” we tend to discover the utter joys in the simplest and most invisible of choices. So I always ask why.

Which leads me to two last conclusive thoughts.

1) Holy hell, is this show something else, or what?

2) And one last hypothetical. If this episode’s tactics was the way cinema actually “worked best,” then wouldn’t people be using these tactics all the time instead of the alternative? But they aren’t.

Why?

<3HULK