‘Game of Thrones’ Recap: Dogs of War
Has there ever been an episode of television this massive in scope, yet this suffocating in tone? Occupying the penultimate position in Game of Thrones‘ sixth season, “The Battle of the Bastards” had five tough acts to follow: the death of Ned Stark, the Battle of the Blackwater, the Red Wedding, the assault on the Castle Black and the “dance of dragons” in Meereen. It stood its own by combining elements of all five: murdered Starks, rampaging giants, fleets set aflame, dragons on the wing, massive action set pieces and brutally intimate violence.
Its defining image isn’t Daenerys‘ reptilian children torching her enemies, nor her handshake of alliance with Yara Greyjoy, nor Littlefinger‘s forces repeating the last-minute rescues pulled by Loras Tyrell at King’s Landing or Stannis Baratheon at the Wall, nor even Jon Snow standing defiant against an entire cavalry charge, memorable as all that was. No, the centerpiece is the overhead shot of Ramsay Bolton‘s spearmen encircling their enemies, pressing inward, slowly crushing the life out of them. More often than not, that’s how watching this thing felt.
Director Miguel Sapochnik previously blew minds with “Hardhome,” last season’s cataclysmic confrontation between the Night’s Watch and the wildlings on one side and the White Walkers and their zombie thralls on the other. Unlike “The Battle of the Bastards,” which had been built to for weeks and referenced explicitly in the episode title, that supernatural slaughter beyond the Wall came as a total shock to viewers — even book readers, since it was effectively the show’s invention. The element of surprise played strongly in its favor, giving each moment an “oh shit, what now?” quality that the chaotic choreography only enhanced.
By comparison, “The Battle of the Bastards” had an air of inevitability to it — yet Sapochnik still made it work in his favor. While the mayhem of “Hardhome” inspired panic and terror, the mud-slinging, blood-spurting maelstrom seen here provoke sheer despair. Horses collide, bodies are smashed and crushed, men are trampled where they stood — even Jon Snow himself nearly dies of asphyxiation from the sheer mass of humanity burying him alive. The effect is strong enough that you didn’t need to believe that House Stark’s ragtag alliance was going to lose, per se, to feel in your guts that the whole thing was a monumental waste of human life.
Literally monumental, in fact. From the burning St. Andrew’s crosses on which the Boltons mounted their flayed victims to the enormous piles of corpses that slowly took over the battlefield until they became the battlefield, this episode used human remains like brutalist architecture uses concrete. (Even poor Shireen Baratheon’s ashes, and the toy Ser Davos finds in them, play a part.) The mounds of the fallen in particular evoked the White Walkers and their undead army, which at one point rained down from a cliff — an actual avalanche of corpses — upon the hapless human beings below. All GoT did here is rearrange the elements a bit, so that living soldiers came pouring down a mountain of dead bodies. Either way, the message that this is what war is came through clear as day.
‘Game of Thrones’ Recap: Dogs of War, Page 1 of 2