How HLV Hides John’s Feelings

 (Sherlock Meta by archipelagoarchaea and recentlyfolded)

archipelagoarchaea:

Okay! So I wrote in the tags of this post by rebootingcheesecake that I really think John’s emotions were deliberately obscured in HLV. I thought I’d mentioned it before in my HLV breakdown, but apparently not. So I thought hey, why not write a post just about that.

To clarify, here’s what I think: Martin Freeman played John as being desperately in love with and protective of Sherlock, but the director, DP, and writers (mostly Moffat, but he says Gatiss always has a hand in writing) made sure we saw as little of that as possible. From a writing perspective, this meant leaving out scenes that would be pretty standard in an episode that includes a main character who gets gravely injured, e.g. the scene in which John finds out that Sherlock will be okay (replaced by the scene where he transmutes his feelings for Sherlock into feelings for his wife), and the scene in which he spends time at Sherlock’s bedside. These would be normal for any depiction of platonic friendship, yet we don’t get so much as a second of this. There’s also the several months between confrontation and Christmas, which could have been a gold mine of characterization, and yet there’s nothing. No John helping Sherlock in his recovery (which almost certainly happened). No Mary asking after Sherlock and being apologetic about his condition (inconsistent with rest of episode, but would make the reconciliation more plausible). No John twisting his wedding ring between his fingers while watching Sherlock sleep. No John contemplating his choice (which absolutely should have happened if the reconciliation is real — it’d be a narrative crime not to). No John trying to play the Rizla game with Sherlock in the hospital while Sherlock tries to remind John of what he loves about Mary. Nothing. Then, from a production standpoint, when John is in a situation to show serious concern it’s filmed either from a distance or a weird angle, or with a shaky camera, or with John obscured in some way by the lighting. Every. Single. Time. Images behind the cut. Lots of them.

Just to be absolutely clear, I’m not suggesting that the only reason for filming a particular way is to conceal John’s feelings. I’m not a photographer, and I’m not going to try to look at this from a cinematographer’s point of view. For example, there’s not much to conceal here, though do take a look at the incredibly phallic flowers in the corner. Then again, if John were only concealed in scenes where he’s falling apart over Sherlock, the technique would be a little too obvious.



In moments where John would be most likely to show his desperation and love for Sherlock, the show makes it very difficult for us to see, and you don’t have to be a cinematographer to notice that. For example, here’s John checking Sherlock’s breathing. So easy to see his face, isn’t it?



Distance and funky shadows when asking who shot Sherlock.



Yes, John’s here, watching Sherlock. What, you didn’t notice on first watch?



This bit was quick, and filmed with an overlay of flashing lights. This is probably the clearest frame in terms of showing his concern — though it’s natural he would be in ‘army doctor’ mode while trying to save Sherlock — and it’s literally the last one.



John’s mouth is open here, I swear.



Lestrade was filmed unclearly during the search as well, but it’s convenient that John is somewhat difficult to read.



Slight tangent, as John’s worry is concealed somewhat by confusion, here, but I’m very interested in how this scene was lit. If you check the mirror, you’ll note that it’s completely dark: the moon lamp isn’t lit. Yet it seems nearly every other light in the entire flat is — including the lights in Sherlock’s bedroom. In the confrontation scene, by contrast, the moon lamp is definitely lit and shows up in the mirror. If someone who understands this stuff wants to explain that, please do.




You’ll note that in contrast to scenes where John is interacting with Sherlock, he’s pretty easy to read when looking at Mary.




Again, slight tangent. This is John reacting to Mrs. Hudson before he goes into anger-mode, and he looks like he’s falling apart. It’s also an example of how the flat is lit for this scene, which makes a difference between when he’s looking at Sherlock and when he’s looking at Mary.



Being angry at Mary, fairly well-lit and close-shot.



Telling Sherlock to shut up, higher contrast and slightly pulled out (latter probably meaningless), with one eye in deep shadow. I don’t know about you, but I feel these shadows make him more difficult to read.



Again, angry with Mary.



Then Sherlock, asking ‘why is she like that?’ Wow he’s hard to see here.



Slight tangent again. Including this so you can see that he’s definitely looking at Mary when he kicks the table (re-watch the clip if you’re unsure), even though it’s Sherlock’s words that set him off. Again, though, shadows make this a bit difficult to see.



Immediately afterward is the only time he looks sad when looking at Mary. I think he really is blaming himself, here, which is pretty heartbreaking.



Then back to the angry looks. We’ve escalated to ‘eye-murder’.



He’s better lit once they sit down and the conversation becomes all about Mary as client and her history, then Sherlock’s excuses for her.




Then the paramedics arrive and the camera pulls back. Now we shift from Mary to concern for Sherlock, and the cinematography really gets crazy.



I mean look at this. Shaky camera, lens glare, paramedics getting in the way.




Seriously? The lens glare is over John’s face far more than anyone else.



John’s face is deeply shadowed when saying ‘she shot you’.



This is probably the most visible his concern gets in this scene. His chest is heaving and he’s glaring daggers at Mary, but once again he’s at a distance and the shadows are deep, and the glare passes over or close to him.



Moving on to Appledore. The lighting’s not as bad as above, but John’s still pretty dark when he’s at his most anguished.



Then the Tarmac scene. This one is much better lit, clearly, but there’s still lots of little things keeping us distanced from John. Here he’s outright blurry. And yes, he’s doing his hand thing.



Then distanced and frequently from the back.



The sun is in his eyes (probably reflected off the plane), which makes him squinty and hard to read.



He turns away (unsurprisingly) when he’s at his most emotional, and we don’t get a view from the back to see what he looks like when he does this.



Part of his face is sometimes blocked by Sherlock himself.



Then the worst part: the handshake goodbye. It’s filmed from a considerable distance and from the wrong side to see John’s hand tremor.



Sherlock is filmed much more clearly, with less obscuration and fewer cut-aways and no squinty light.

Again, I’m not saying the sole purpose of this design was to conceal John’s feelings. But the way this episode was filmed certainly did a good job of it. This is probably at least in part because Series 3 was primarily from Sherlock’s point of view, and Sherlock fails to see how much John cares for him, but the principle is the same. For some reason, John’s love for Sherlock is being obscured, and Martin Freeman’s fantastic acting with it. And if it has nothing to with Johnlock or the ‘reconciliation’, then what is it about?

And for the record, this is not my desperate attempt to dig for evidence of John’s love. This is just something I perceived the first time I watched HLV. Hopefully the screencaps helped clarify my position. If not, try rewatching HLV with these in mind. It’s a relatively subtle thing, but I think it makes all the difference for this hiatus.

recentlyfolded:

Yeah, this bothered me in the first viewing of the ep and I just assumed at the time that it was to keep us off-balanced, much as the addled timeline seemed intended to do. With further thought about the whole series as well as the ep and with rewatching, I tend to agree: we’re not seeing John because Sherlock doesn’t see John. The lack of seeing (that we perforce share with Sherlock) underscores the lack of his understanding in a lovely way.

And, stylistically, this shooting aesthetic actually ends up fostering wank just because everything is so fractured into glimpses. It’s been oft-repeated, especially by meta critics, that a single screen cap fails to communicate the action in a scene and leads to overly-focused misinterpretations. But with things so hard to see at times in this episode, it’s often only by stopping the action and framing through it that we can figure out what’s going on. I don’t mean to suggest that the crew meant to encourage wank, but just that this is one of the many sorts of uncertainties, of obscuring facades that makes this episode so difficult to come to any consensus about.