Douglas Coupland All The Way Down

I'm here because all fairy tales happen on the internet, Douglas Coupland, even those that don't.

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Luther is the best television I’ve seen in a long time. A comparison to Sherlock is neat and easy, and in a lot of ways the two are the same; in part, this is because John Luther draws some inspiration from Holmes as, obviously, Sherlock does. Even beyond that, though, the thing that knocks the latter show from being merely good television to being great television are those all-too-brief moments of pure beauty that the sets and the cinematography of the show provide. Luther, at least in the first three episodes of the first series, consistently comes up with these kinds of shots. Much of this has to do with set design and choice of location (we’ll get to those later), some of it has to do with the show’s ubiquitously narrow depth of field (which we’ll get to later still), but a lot of it has to do with the blocking.  This, from the first episode, is a great example. Idris Elba is huge (Google’s best guess is 6’3 and 3/4), but here he looks tiny. He must be a full seven or eight inches taller than Indira Varma (whose back is to the screen here, and whose playing Luther’s estranged wife) and he’s just intimidated two of her clients from her office and so he’s 6’4, practically, and full of rage, and just look at how small and fragile he looks here. Elba’s a fantastic actor, so that’s some of what’s going on, but it has more to do with his location relative both to her location and to the location of the furniture in the room. The frosted glass windows and the horizontal lines force perspective a little bit, too, so the room actually appears much bigger than it is, shrinking Elba even further; John Luther is a weak and brittle man, and you can see here how little it would take to break him.

Luther is the best television I’ve seen in a long time. A comparison to Sherlock is neat and easy, and in a lot of ways the two are the same; in part, this is because John Luther draws some inspiration from Holmes as, obviously, Sherlock does. Even beyond that, though, the thing that knocks the latter show from being merely good television to being great television are those all-too-brief moments of pure beauty that the sets and the cinematography of the show provide. Luther, at least in the first three episodes of the first series, consistently comes up with these kinds of shots. Much of this has to do with set design and choice of location (we’ll get to those later), some of it has to do with the show’s ubiquitously narrow depth of field (which we’ll get to later still), but a lot of it has to do with the blocking. 

This, from the first episode, is a great example. Idris Elba is huge (Google’s best guess is 6’3 and 3/4), but here he looks tiny. He must be a full seven or eight inches taller than Indira Varma (whose back is to the screen here, and whose playing Luther’s estranged wife) and he’s just intimidated two of her clients from her office and so he’s 6’4, practically, and full of rage, and just look at how small and fragile he looks here. Elba’s a fantastic actor, so that’s some of what’s going on, but it has more to do with his location relative both to her location and to the location of the furniture in the room. The frosted glass windows and the horizontal lines force perspective a little bit, too, so the room actually appears much bigger than it is, shrinking Elba even further; John Luther is a weak and brittle man, and you can see here how little it would take to break him.

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