Lookback: Flashbacks
Jun. 14th, 2018 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sistermagpie posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
theamericansStill not ready to stop talking about the show yet--there's so many new things to see now that it's over! I keep noticing new things. For instance, I just noticed another parallel to season 1. Back then in In Control the Russians think there's a coup going on while the Americans assume Reagan's shooter is a nutjob and Haig's just puffing himself up. Both sides are understanding the situation via patterns they're familiar with from their own history.
In S6 we *do* have a coup, and it's Russian, and Stan more than once says he doesn't care who leads the country. Again the two sides are having a very different reactions to the potential loss of one of their leaders. It seems the Russians overreact in In Control and Stan under-reacts in START.
Anyway, now that the show's over we also know that we're never going to get detailed backstory on Philip, so I was thinking about what we did get.
I was talking to someone about how we got so much more backstory on Elizabeth and we started talking about how very differently their flashbacks are in style. Flashbacks for Elizabeth usually involve someone telling her something that she hears on some level because she remembers it. We see conversations that clearly relate to whatever is going on in the present. Even in Jennings, Elizabeth she pulls out an incident that illustrates her conflict (and apparently was originally supposed to happen earlier).
Philip only really has one flashback like this (unless we count any of the flashbacks in the pilot as his or both of theirs). It's in season 1 and it really just tells us that Irina was his girlfriend and they were planning a life together, something that probably would have been more interesting if it only came out through conversations between them in the present.
After that, though, the show seems to commit to giving Philip a very different style of flashback and despite always wanting MORE here at the end of all things I have to admit that...I actually think they were better than Elizabeth's.
It's not a criticism of Elizabeth's flashbacks. In fact, it's a compliment because I think the two styles fit the characters very well. Of course Elizabeth would be didactic even in her own flashbacks. She would remember lessons learned or taught. Things that supported or tried to threaten her worldview. (Although some of the flashbacks might not be something she's actively remembering herself.) A big part of her story is her trying to replace or ignore feelings to focus on What Is Right. Ericka specifically teaches her she has to put herself into the picture, but in most of her flashbacks she's there, but mostly just to hear or say words.
Except in the flashback to her rape.
Philip's flashbacks, starting I believe in S3 with Salang Pass,become much more, for lack of a better word, sensual--as in, about the senses. In Salang Pass he remembers sex training in a sequence that's hazy and dreamlike. We watch it all from over Philip's shoulder as if we are in his pov. There's no words, so mostly what makes an impression are the physical details: that ugly room that looks almost like an empty classroom at night, the tiny bed, the various less-than-perfect people, their expressions and little movements.
That continues after that. Remembering the milk incident the place, again, becomes memorable: the farm animals and people in the square, the chipped walls of the tunnel, the sounds of the beating, the spattering blood. The only words are the taunts and later pleas of the other boys.
The next season we get a series of scenes at home and again the home is the thing that iirc made the biggest impression. We've seen 3 rooms in Elizabeth's apartment and while they're full of their own details they're not the thing that stands out in her flashbacks that take place there. They come across as pretty normal apartments. Philip's home, otoh, got tons of notice even after very short flashes of it: the dim light, the snow at the door, the airplane made of twisted branches, the tap of the brother's hammer, the flickering fire in the stove, the grey walls, the thin curtains, those bread rations, the blood on the boots, the contrasting sunniness when he's playing with his father, his parents' faces.
We never see flashbacks in The Deal but I tend to think his lines about liking the cold and his memory of playing with icicles represent similar flashbacks that we just didn't see.
In the last season there's a final flashback for each person. Elizabeth comes in several scenes, the first of which actually are more visceral because she's just coming across this accident on an empty street. It's a contrast to the last scene where we get the lesson.
Philip's last flashback is again totally wordles--and again for me, at least, it still made more of an impression than the horse story despite the other being more extreme (or maybe that's why). This last flashback has the sight of those near-empty pots with porridge stuck to the bottom, the scraping of the spoons, the banging of the door, the faces of the kids, the setting of that alleyway. Elizabeth walks along a street lined with outdated but iirc still newish-looking patriotic posters; Philip just has that door with "service entrance" painted by it in plain letters.
I would still have loved to have gotten more flashbacks for Philip but in the end I do think that the choice to style his flashbacks so differently works. I would have liked to have gotten at least one more that was people-related, especially one that was more loving. But damn if his few flashbacks didn't all make an impression!
In S6 we *do* have a coup, and it's Russian, and Stan more than once says he doesn't care who leads the country. Again the two sides are having a very different reactions to the potential loss of one of their leaders. It seems the Russians overreact in In Control and Stan under-reacts in START.
Anyway, now that the show's over we also know that we're never going to get detailed backstory on Philip, so I was thinking about what we did get.
I was talking to someone about how we got so much more backstory on Elizabeth and we started talking about how very differently their flashbacks are in style. Flashbacks for Elizabeth usually involve someone telling her something that she hears on some level because she remembers it. We see conversations that clearly relate to whatever is going on in the present. Even in Jennings, Elizabeth she pulls out an incident that illustrates her conflict (and apparently was originally supposed to happen earlier).
Philip only really has one flashback like this (unless we count any of the flashbacks in the pilot as his or both of theirs). It's in season 1 and it really just tells us that Irina was his girlfriend and they were planning a life together, something that probably would have been more interesting if it only came out through conversations between them in the present.
After that, though, the show seems to commit to giving Philip a very different style of flashback and despite always wanting MORE here at the end of all things I have to admit that...I actually think they were better than Elizabeth's.
It's not a criticism of Elizabeth's flashbacks. In fact, it's a compliment because I think the two styles fit the characters very well. Of course Elizabeth would be didactic even in her own flashbacks. She would remember lessons learned or taught. Things that supported or tried to threaten her worldview. (Although some of the flashbacks might not be something she's actively remembering herself.) A big part of her story is her trying to replace or ignore feelings to focus on What Is Right. Ericka specifically teaches her she has to put herself into the picture, but in most of her flashbacks she's there, but mostly just to hear or say words.
Except in the flashback to her rape.
Philip's flashbacks, starting I believe in S3 with Salang Pass,become much more, for lack of a better word, sensual--as in, about the senses. In Salang Pass he remembers sex training in a sequence that's hazy and dreamlike. We watch it all from over Philip's shoulder as if we are in his pov. There's no words, so mostly what makes an impression are the physical details: that ugly room that looks almost like an empty classroom at night, the tiny bed, the various less-than-perfect people, their expressions and little movements.
That continues after that. Remembering the milk incident the place, again, becomes memorable: the farm animals and people in the square, the chipped walls of the tunnel, the sounds of the beating, the spattering blood. The only words are the taunts and later pleas of the other boys.
The next season we get a series of scenes at home and again the home is the thing that iirc made the biggest impression. We've seen 3 rooms in Elizabeth's apartment and while they're full of their own details they're not the thing that stands out in her flashbacks that take place there. They come across as pretty normal apartments. Philip's home, otoh, got tons of notice even after very short flashes of it: the dim light, the snow at the door, the airplane made of twisted branches, the tap of the brother's hammer, the flickering fire in the stove, the grey walls, the thin curtains, those bread rations, the blood on the boots, the contrasting sunniness when he's playing with his father, his parents' faces.
We never see flashbacks in The Deal but I tend to think his lines about liking the cold and his memory of playing with icicles represent similar flashbacks that we just didn't see.
In the last season there's a final flashback for each person. Elizabeth comes in several scenes, the first of which actually are more visceral because she's just coming across this accident on an empty street. It's a contrast to the last scene where we get the lesson.
Philip's last flashback is again totally wordles--and again for me, at least, it still made more of an impression than the horse story despite the other being more extreme (or maybe that's why). This last flashback has the sight of those near-empty pots with porridge stuck to the bottom, the scraping of the spoons, the banging of the door, the faces of the kids, the setting of that alleyway. Elizabeth walks along a street lined with outdated but iirc still newish-looking patriotic posters; Philip just has that door with "service entrance" painted by it in plain letters.
I would still have loved to have gotten more flashbacks for Philip but in the end I do think that the choice to style his flashbacks so differently works. I would have liked to have gotten at least one more that was people-related, especially one that was more loving. But damn if his few flashbacks didn't all make an impression!
no subject
Date: 2018-06-17 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-17 06:09 pm (UTC)Two styles of flashbacks
Date: 2018-06-17 04:50 pm (UTC)-J
Re: Two styles of flashbacks
Date: 2018-06-17 06:13 pm (UTC)But yes, with so many of them, especially, it gets to seem very artificial and her telling the story usually works better because she's naturally going to filter it through her own beliefs. Plus KR can act the subject and all the ways Elizabeth disagrees with her own assessment.
It also makes me think how they give Elizabeth dreams to spell out her unconscious too. I do really like both dreams she has--the one about Pastor Tim and Paige and of course the one at the end--but it does make her psychology seem really simple. Almost like Spellbound-level simple!
It seemed especially egregious with that last story about the accident with the horse because it got to seem as if her entire life was made up of handy conversations and stories made to illustrate points that we already knew anyway. And yet they really loved doing flashbacks for her!
Re: Two styles of flashbacks
Date: 2018-06-19 04:08 pm (UTC)I actually LOVED the dream at the end, though, and I don't find it simple at all. There are all sorts of layers in it if you dig a bit. The art bringing back thoughts of Gregory, the memories of how ambivalent (possibly even hostile) she felt about being pregnant and how that would feel after actually losing her adult and near-adult children, the blurry line between fantasy and reality. I actually would have been fine with them doing all of Elizabeth's "flashbacks" as dreams. :)
-J
Re: Two styles of flashbacks
Date: 2018-06-19 06:04 pm (UTC)The Paige dream is just as complicated. Paige walks into the cabin where she's planning to kill Pastor Tim, he's there dead. You think it's a dream about Paige finding his dead body and that being upsetting but instead he turns into TIMOSHEV and attacks her.
On one level it's very straightforward in terms of connecting what Elizabeth is thinking of doing to Paige with what was done to her, but it's not just saying one straightforward thing. It's not even totally about Paige. Timoshev being there also brings in a whole level of Paige being a stand-in for Elizabeth and her mother being the unseen mother in the dream.
I'm going to have to look back at our earlier discussion because that definitely sounds like something I would have thought. I mean, I do still agree with myself here in saying that the different styles fit the characters, but even Elizabeth can't completely control her own memories to the point where they stick to the script that closely. It makes me think she's actually remembering all of this wrong--which is possible.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-25 12:49 pm (UTC)Elizabeth’s flashbacks want to explain us what why Elizabeth is going to make a radical change in her life. I think to S1 when she understand she misses Philip after the separation and she would like him to come home to join in their relationship again.
Or in S6 when she was going to go against Claudia and the Center to save Nesterenko.
For Elizabeth those decision are big thing….
Philip’s flashbacks are more introspective and the would want show us why he has so many doubts or show us his most intimate motivations, his behavior… i.e. they help us to understand why he need to go to EST, why he puts Elizabeth and the family first.
I hope I explained myself.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-25 05:24 pm (UTC)