The last series of Game of Thrones is turning out to be a powerful combination of moving and thrilling cinema. I don’t think it should be considered television. That is too meager of a medium to describe the accomplishment. The scope of this series is so vast, and the concluding episodes show such beautiful cinematography, that it simply has to be called a long form work of cinema. Yes, HBO has produced it. Still, Emilia Clarke’s acting is so much more expressive, subtle, and powerful than the large quantity of garbage sent to multiplex theaters that I prefer to accept Game of Thrones as cinema rather than the Avengers movies.
The series is so filmic that it almost rediscovers film. This is a medium that is in serious need of fixing in the 21st century. Film has largely been withering under the force of even worse commercialism than before, tiny screens with junk social media content for an increasingly dumbed down and artistically numb population. Cinema needs a shot of life with new ideas and new perspective. Game of Thrones is closer to that than most films, though to be fair, cheaper distribution and digital production for smaller works has allowed for some good independent filmmaking to exist. The vision of this series though is truly cinematic while its dramatic portrayals are subtle and complex. Added to that is a willingness to challenge social norms and conventions, to slay sacred cows, that makes it one of the few challenging 21st century cinematic works.
The long running time of the series allows for Shakespearean stories of fights for power, fatal downfalls, and twisted intentions to get real life on the screen. That allows for Game of Thrones to reflect the world we live in better than most films can ever touch. The sheer lack of subversiveness in cinema as a medium has by contrast become frightening as it prevents organic real life from slipping in, replaced by cold technological simulations that are designed to please bureaucrats and consumers rather than human beings. Where Alfred Hitchcock once delved into psychology most would deem untouchable for the screen in Vertigo, today film is so absurdly scared to upset the powerful that the legal system is misrepresented as being just, reliable, and rule bound in spite of voluminous factual empirical evidence to the contrary, while rich authoritarians are made to look good in almost every movie. Then there is Game of Thrones.
In a masterwork, we see the powerful laid bare as corrupt, psychotic, perverse, stupid, and greedy in a way that American culture tries very hard not to admit. If HBO is able to air such original ideas, their production team for the series should be accepted as one of the only good parts of 21st century cinema. The first half of the final series has brought us to complex character dynamics with hints of resolution to some long conflicts, but the show does not go to the point of wrapping things up neatly. It brings resolutions alongside questions and still more dynamics of conflict and far reaching motivation. The willingness to not shy from controversy but to instead portray popular and powerful people as depraved and mentally deranged just like they really are is perhaps given more life by being shown in the home thanks to HD broadcasting.
There is no concern about pleasing movie theaters or having a big glitzy and expensive opening weekend. Instead, there are hours and hours of very good acting and complex screenwriting. We see portrayals that challenge our perceptions of people in power around us, and we recognize truth. While America’s Attorney General is accused of committing a crime under the law by the Speaker of the House for lying to the U.S. Congress about a criminal investigation of the President, Americans are able to see themselves as being ruled by plotting idiots very similar to Cersei Lannister on HBO’s excellent television series. Game of Thrones has a subversive way of showing that American culture has become so corrupt that people are ruled by deranged people with fat stomaches and excited genitalia instead of honorable, intelligent, wise, just, or competent people. Much like Game of Thrones, violence perpetrated by the rich against everyone else has become the normal state of life.
If cinema were willing to go there the same way as David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Emilia Clarke it might have a chance of becoming a relevant artistic medium again, the way it used to be when George Romero made Dawn of the Dead as a rich allegory of American consumerism ultimately destroying all of us, and the way that people have to discover now by watching restored classics instead of new movies filled with CGI, pablum, and dialogue written for people so attached to their phone screens that they are unable to distinguish between fact and fiction any longer, a serious limitation that makes superhero movies very popular with the general population. For Game of Thrones, we instead get a gritty view of life where power and money have corrupted everyone of prominence. To some fans of the show, the Night King seemed like a savior for that very reason.
The beautiful third episode though, halfway through the final series, has brought us his death at the hands of the diminutive Arya Stark. It suggests power in the hands of the smaller and the weak, a principle of democracy entering the show in the background of a series that has shown us so much of how corrupt and depraved the powerful really are, with obsessions for gold and sex with their own family members or less powerful people very close to them much like politicians, businessmen, and academic leaders of today behave. While the powerful in America threaten journalists, point fingers at each other, frame their critics, and abuse logic to manufacture twisted lies and propaganda in desperate efforts to obfuscate their own corruption and abuse of power, Game of Thrones shows us the truth about rich and powerful predators who can’t wait to sink their teeth into everybody else just to steal more stuff.
Money is what really rules Westeros, and those who follow ethics and strive to be virtuous and to help other people pay the price for it. Sophie Turner’s portrayal of Sansa Stark showed us this as the meek and kind child of the just Ned Stark was brutally tormented by the rich and powerful Ramsay, a person of little intellect and no virtue but instead violent obscene power, much like the heads of organizations in our own society. We love the Stark family, because they stand up for normal people and virtue and don’t bow to wealth.
The first two episodes of this last season of Game of Thrones set up the middle war episode deftly. They offered subtle character developments. We see the side of especially Jon and Dany along with their companions preparing for the worst and trying to form bonds with people they care for. That effort to care about each other in conflict is what made the first two episodes so very moving. The biggest revelation is Jon’s lineage making him a Targaryen and heir to the iron throne. Hopefully the show will have him and Dany decide that it doesn’t matter, because the iron throne is not worth very much after all. It’s too bloody, to corrupt, too vicious to matter as much as people being just and caring for one another.
