Well Throne-heads, one Mr. Miguel Sapochnik has done it again. The director has taken over the “Neil Marshall Memorial Episode Nine Mantle,” and he’s done it with style, grace, and a whole heck of a lot of fake blood in “Battle of the Bastards.” Having helmed last season’s episode nine, “Hardhome,” when Jon Snow (Kit Harington) battled the Night King and White Walkers, Sapochnik was an obvious choice, and he more than excels at rendering the brutal and bloody pitched battle that episode writers/showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss laid out. It was beautifully chaotic, epically grimy, and almost unbearable to watch, but impossible to look away from.
This battle (and episode) was insanely, beautifully shot, by DP Fabian Wagner. From the long shot of Davos silhouetted against a rosy sunrise, contrasted with an icy-blue landscape; horses galloping into battle in slow motion, legs pumping toward toward a certain death; the literally breathtaking sequence of Jon trampled by bodies during battle. Each moment was exquisitely rendered, and the battle was cinematically, stylistically, and viscerally absolutely one of the best we’ve seen on the show. Also, serious shoutouts to horse master Camilla Naprous, stunt coordinator Rowley Irlam, and the editors and VFX supervisors—it takes a village, people (just watch this Anatomy of a Scene on HBO Go). At any rate, I was screaming into a throw pillow for this entire episode, so it’s a job well done on everyone’s part.
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Sapochnik brings a real sense of immediacy and subjectivity to the battle, which is both intimate and gruesome. Marshall’s sweeping long shots during the Battle of Castle Black were a stunning achievement of direction, stunt work, and camera control, which gave context and geography to almost balletic scenes of fighting. In ‘Bastards,’ Sapochnik cuts in closely as we follow Jon Snow’s experience on the ground. It’s human scaled—we see Jon almost mowed down by a stampede of horses, the distance as he faces off with Ramsay (Iwan Rheon), and close ups of his face smeared with blood and mud and goo as he nearly gets his head lopped off, and does some lopping off himself. There is one long shot that follows him through the beginning of the mayhem that even might eclipse the other battle long shots, as horses gallop past, swords and clubs fly, and arrows drop from the sky like deadly hail. It’s amazing.
The entirety of Season 6 has been leading up to this Battle for Winterfell, and it didn’t disappoint. Did Benioff and Weiss rely on some deus ex machina to make sure the Stark faves survived? Sure, but they were deux ex machina planted episodes ago. Part of genre pleasure comes from the denial and fulfillment of expectations, so there has to be a little of both. Is it facile for the Knights of the Vale to come rushing in and scatter all the Bolton troops like so many bowling pins? Sure, maybe. But at that point in time, the tension was so high that I was hoping for a dragon to come in and roast Boltons, as far fetched as that would have been.
Of course, not all Starks survived. After a parley with Ramsay, during which Jon suggests the two just have a duel and get it over with, the sibs and Davos retreat for battle planning. Sansa (Sophie Turner) remains quiet, but afterwards asserts her knowledge of Ramsay’s deviousness to her brother Jon. She knows Ramsay likes to play torturous games, to set traps and lure prey. Jon, for all he’s seen, just doesn’t understand manipulation like that. He’s a fighter, Ramsay’s a hunter. Sansa has already written off Rickon (Art Parkinson) as a lost cause, and she’s not too upset about it either. She tells Jon that she’s never going back to Ramsay alive, and while he promises to protect her, she declares “no one can protect anyone.” Just another conversation that shows how far apart their worldviews have grown in accordance with their experiences.
In other battle preps: Jon tells Melisandre (Carice Van Houten) not to bring him back again if he dies, and she’s like *shrug*, the Lord of Light wants what the Lord of Light wants. It seems like Melisandre’s reanimating powers have shaken her, caused a crisis of confidence in her own knowledge of herself, as she realizes that the LoL has taken over and she has little control. Or so she believes.