Love is in the details

Note: this was originally published in Weighted Tangents, my Substack newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.

I purchased a PS3 specifically to play The Last of Us, and made it about 10 minutes into the game before putting it down for good. Despite the rave reviews online, I couldn’t get into it. At the time my exposure to video games had been the suite of Super Mario Bros. side-scrolling platformers and WoW. I had no concept of a narrative video game, let alone the patience to play one. Compounding the issue was that The Last of Us was released exclusively on PS3, and I, for reasons I still do not understand, struggle beyond belief with console controllers.

When the television adaptation of The Last of Us was announced I was cautiously optimistic, and when the casting announcements started rolling in I was sold. It wasn’t just the pairing of Game of Thrones alums Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal—phenoms in their own right—as co-leads in the show that got me hyped, but seeing the likes of Nick Offerman, Storm Reid, and Melanie Lynskey join the cast were what I knew would elevate the show.

And for the first five episodes of the season, The Last of Us has delivered.

While this past week’s “Endure and Survive” was extraordinary for a multitude of reasons, there was a small moment that evoked the most visceral of reactions from me because it was so exquisitely well-done, and provided such a stellar example of “show, don’t tell”.

Note: mild spoilers ahead

The moment I’m referring to comes about 45 minutes into the episode. Joel is in a dilapidated house, shooting from a second-story window. Ellie is in the yard, pinned down first by the Kansas City resistance group and then the hordes of infected that have emerged from their subterranean prison. Ellie tries to make a break for it, trips, and is almost demolished by an infected when it’s suddenly shot dead. She looks up and sees that Joel was responsible for keeping her safe, and what follows is three seconds of beautiful storytelling.

I’ve pulled out the stills from each moment in the scene (and lightened them a bit so they’re easier to see) and annotated them:

Now this is probably cinematography 101, but keeping Ellie and Joel’s lines of sight consistent between cuts lets us, the viewer, in on the communication. We know Ellie is looking at Joel even though we can’t see him, just as we know that Joel is looking at Ellie.

You can see Joel’s slightly furrowed brow in the above still, and how it resolves into a calmer, more determined expression below. By where she’s looking, Ellie has indicated that she’s going to make a run for that window, and she’s needs Joel to help her.

It’s a few quick beats—boom, boom, boom—and then we’re back in the action. There’s no pointing, there’s no arm waving, there’s no dialogue. In a matter of seconds we know exactly what each of these characters is thinking, plans on doing, and that they have each other’s backs. When I stop and think about it it absolutely breaks my brain.

But where this really takes off is that it’s a brilliant callback to episode 4, “Please Hold My Hand”, where Ellie and Joel first arrive in the rebel-held Kansas City. They’ve been ambushed, and as a result have crashed into a storefront where they take cover behind their truck as shooters begin to close in on them.

When you compare these two scenes it shows how the relationship between Ellie and Joel has changed. In the episode 4 scene, Joel is fully responsible for Ellie’s safety. Throughout the entire “can you squeeze through the hole in the wall” scene their lines of sight are almost always perpendicular to one another, and there’s no direct eye contact. Joel is looking for ways to keep Ellie safe, while Ellie is curious and concerned about who these shooters are. And when Joel asks Ellie if she can get through the hole, he’s looking at her while she’s looking at the hole in the wall. Their lines of sight are never parallel, they’re never looking in the same direction at the same time, and so it’s back and forth, give and take, a communication style that takes a bit more effort than either really has the time for.

But in episode 5 it all shifts — they’re making direct eye contact and planning without saying a word. They’re locked in and know what the other is thinking, and where they’re looking is now aligned. Their lines of sight are either a direct reflection of one another or fixed in the same direction. The level of trust between them has grown exponentially — they’re a team. Ellie is no longer cargo that Joel must deliver intact, but a fully actualized person that he needs to rely on if they’re both going to survive.

The Last of Us may not be for you, but it is absolutely brilliant. It’s up there with Better Call Saul in terms of storytelling, cinematography, and character development, and something I’ll be studying for years.