#third mirror shot flashback being plot relevant

[dinitride-art]

Lighting and Mike and Will - Full Analysis (Pt.16)

Alright so, this is the last one this is going to be split into. This is going to be the painting explanation and everything after that.

S4:E8 - No, You’re My Heart (#3) / Two Hearts One Monologue

This shot of Jonathan is important because another perspective is being established in this scene. This is a POV shot, because Jonathan is looking in a direction (the mirror) and then we see through his eyes. 

We see that in this perspective, both Mike and Will have light touching their faces. The Logo on the back window also isn’t placed in a way where we can clearly read ‘boy’ in the middle of Mike and Will’s heads. 

We can also see that the way this is framed, the background is blue and yellow behind the mirror. 

As Will continues to speak in this scene, explaining the meaning of the painting and going further in depth into his own feelings, the light returns. 

And the heart gets brighter and brighter in his eye.

Will’s shoulder is in this shot, and the shadow of ‘boy’ that’s usually on Mike’s side, is replaced by ‘surfer’. But the logo is still there and pointing to Will. As Will explains the painting Mike seems almost happy. As it’s been established within the series already that Mike appreciates Will’s artwork, this is a reaction that makes sense.  

And Will’s hand is pretty well lit when he starts pointing things out on the painting. 

The light on Mike’s face in these shots is pretty interesting to me. We’re looking at Will from Mike’s perspective, so it’s a weird choice to have him illuminated. 

Mike’s perspective of Will here also shows us how careful they are to include the reflection of the van window in Will’s eye. 

There are a lot of elements that are going into Mike’s perspective of Will: The lighting contrast; Will being in a softer almost whimsical lighting, and Mike being lit normally, the car window always present in Will’s eye, the way the light is allowed to fall on each of their faces- or rather how it isn’t in Mike’s case, and everything else in this scene and the lead up to it. Symbolism, imagery, acting choices, cinematography, everything is so delicate that it’s hard to see if you aren’t looking for it- unless you either really like film and/or relate to these experiences. (and then you end up in the byler tag on tumblr-)

OTS shot from Will here, so we’re looking at Mike though his eyes. The patch of light on Mike’s face is gone from this shot, so I get the feeling that it might not’ve been intentional? But maybe it was more the angle that it was shot at made it hard to keep the light off of Mike’s face. 

Either way, we can see that the light in Mike’s eyes are changing. This could just be the way that the lighting falls, but knowing that this scene took a long time to film and that it had a lot of elements, this light should've had some movement to it. The fact that it’s in the same place and that it shows similar contrast to Will’s heart in his eye, I’d be hard pressed to say there wasn’t something worth looking into here. 

The way that Will’s face is positioned during this shot is also interesting. We’re getting and OTS shot, but we’re also still getting his side profile in frame. We can see his expressions pretty clearly, in a way we usually can’t in Mike’s OTS shots in this scene. I think that we’re making our way to the same level of shared narration that Mike and El’s fight had. 

Looking closer into Mike’s eye here as well, we can see that the light has gotten brighter. It’s moved slightly, but still maintains it’s general shape; an downwards pointing obtuse angle. In Mike’s other eye, it’s not as obvious, but we can see coming from the singular point of light, a sort of weird bend to the lights there. This could just be the angle of the light and refraction of it on Mike’s eye, but we can also see it in his other eye (the one with the brighter light) as well. 

There are three main points of light in Mike’s eyes: the brightest one, the dot next to the brightest point, and the signal dot in the other eye. 

The two dots have been present since Mike opened the painting. The larger point of light has been subtly growing there since then.

The light is dimmer here, but is still present. And we can still see Will’s face on an angle as he talks. This is a shot that we don’t have many of this season, Mike openly looking at Will as he talks. We can really see what Mike is thinking here from his expressions. 

These four frames here are mostly to show that the window reflection is consistent, but as of right here the heart is gone. We can also still see the light on Mike’s face. Will is still in that angelic/whimsical light. The bullet holes in the van next to Will’s head also kind of make a half heart shape, just a little bit. 

Jumping forwards a little bit, we get to Jonathan’s perspective. This is a POV shot again, and we go back into his eyes and look into the mirror. 

Jonathan is a more neutral perspective than Mike and Will are in this scene, but that doesn’t mean he can’t influence what we take from this scene. He’s Will’s older brother, so he’s naturally biased towards Will. He’s also seen how Mike was at the airport and how Will has been affected by Mike and Will’s communication problems. Jonathan has mostly been seeing Will and Will’s side of things. 

Even here we can see that even though the light is far more neutral, Will is still in the light. He’s our outside narration of the scene, but he’s still a character with his own thoughts and feelings about it. 

This is the second time we get a mirror view of Mike and Will. Now while this is just Jonathan’s perspective, this could also have meaning in way of the overall scene. 

Mirrors are common symbols of literally saying that something is reflecting or mirroring something. Mike and Will commonly mirror each other with their placement in scenes (even just when they were across from each other burying the body, but more so in their expressions, body language and reactions to situations, like when they look to each other for assurance), and in what they’re wearing- They’ve had matching watches for quite a while. 

This could be giving us incite into what is happening in the scene. Mike and Will are talking under the guise of El, but this could be saying that they are both using El in place of something else. The reflections of light in each others eyes, and the shadow of the van logo (boy), seem to be in line with the idea of Mike and Will reflecting each other. 

“Sometimes when you’re different, you feel like a mistake,” is an interesting line to place here. Mike and Will are being shot very similarly. This line could very well apply to both of them, which would fit with the two of them mirroring each other. 

This shot right here parallels Mike and El’s fight really well. Mike is blurred and we can tell that we’re in El/Will’s perspective because of the lighting difference and the way they are positioned in the shot. Mike and El’s faces are in the light in their shot, but neither Mike or Will are in the light in this one. It does flicker over Will’s face a few times but not to the level that he’s lit in Mike’s perspective. 

In these scenes, El and Will are contradicting each other. Will is saying a lot of things that oppose what El said. “You make her feel like she’s not a mistake at all” vs. “you think I’m a monster”. We already know that Will was talking about himself here, but this only furthers that. 

Mike is also in a very different position here. He’s mirroring Will, he’s not tense, he’s not arguing. He’s just listening. 

Another occurrence of the heart flickering in and out of Will’s eye when he turns back and faces Mike. 

The light progression in this part of the scene is sudden. 

We’ve got an OTS shot from Mike, and the light, so we know that this is Mike. 

“You make her feel like she’s not a mistake at all, like she’s better for being different.”

Will gets brighter and brighter. 

(heart eye number- I don’t even know anymore. I even cut the number I actually put in this post because there are just too many)

Will isn’t the only one getting brighter. Although it’s way more subtle, the light in Mike’s eye is shining. 

And we switch here from being absolutely blinding, to the sunlight shining brighter on Will’s face and shoulder. 

Mike’s expression during this part of the scene consists of a few occurrences where he breathes in a purses his lips. I find it really similar to when you try to stop yourself from crying before you even start. 

The light in Mike’s eyes flares up when he says, “yeah?”. That alongside the fact that the lighting was consistent for that long, makes me think that it does mean something. 

But also, Mike isn’t relieved here, or happy. He almost looks hurt. He looks away from Will for a second before he starts talking. His eyebrows are slightly furrowed and while he does look very softly at Will, he kinda looks like he might start crying in some of these frames. 

And then we go back to Will, and the yellow and blue lights have returned and the angelic/glowy/whimsical lighting and he’s looking at Mike the same way that Mike is looking at him. 

Mike is smiling at Will. Smile lines on his face and his eyebrows unfurrowed. We’re also looking the side of Will’s face. This may or may not be from Will’s perspective. But I don’t think that it is. Because, the lights in Mike’s eyes have faded almost entirely. Mike is looking at Will here and we get to see it. 

But we also get to see the smile drop as soon as Will turns away. 

Will turns away and starts crying, but we can still see Mike behind him. He’s out of focus- Will being our center of attention- but we see him tun to look at Will briefly. 

We see Mike looking at Will.

Mike has been looking at Will nearly all of this season, but we don’t see it because we see what Mike sees; we see Will. 

But this isn’t Mike. And this isn’t Will, because why would we see Mike looking at Will if Will was the one narrating?

Then we get this. Jonathan looking up at the mirror we know is there. 

But we don’t get another mirror shot.

And sure, it’s already been established that Jonathan is looking at Mike and Wil through the mirror, but those shots also gave us an important outside narration of the scene. 

If Mike took all of what Will said at face value, as just about El, and he noticed Will crying, there would be no reason not to at least pat him on the shoulder or something. Mike isn’t cruel. And we’ve seen that even when he’s an asshole, it’s never towards Will, not without immediate regret. 

If Mike was thinking about El during this conversation, he wouldn’t look at Will like he’s the sun. He wouldn’t look at Will like he’s in love with him. He would have looked relieved by the comfort, not like he breaking in half and falling in love at the same time. 

Mike asked Will, “What if after all this is over, she doesn’t need me anymore?” 

And Will told him, with his entire heart, that El would always need him. He tore himself to pieces to comfort Mike. But I think Will got it wrong. Maybe Mike was asking or Will to tell him that it would be okay if El didn’t need him anymore. 

After Mike’s smile drops, we don’t get to see what happens next. We see Will crying, and we see that Jonathan sees that, but we don’t get to see Mike. 

We aren’t done with this scene. The painting still needs to be discussed because Will did lie about it. But also, we never get that third mirror shot. 

Jonathan doesn’t give us Mike. We can see that his expression changes but we don’t get any explanation. Only Jonathan knows. 

If they wanted to show Mike’s indifference and Jonathan’s reaction to Will, then we would’ve seen it through the mirror. Or we would’ve gotten a front view shot of the two of them. But we don’t get anything. 

This seems like something that we’re going to come back to later. But it would make far more sense for Mike not to comfort or even notice Will crying because he was trying not to. 

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