Distractions: A Strange Place

The first couple of seasons of Lost were often beautiful. It is one of the first few shows I saw in HD after we got our big television, and it's still one of the few instances where the difference between normal resolution and HD is palpable. In these seasons the Island itself was still a major force, its forests veiling unfathomable mystery. The darkly gleaming emerald of the jungle leant both an earthly grounding and a surreality to the stories that wove in and out of it. The jungle embraced, closed in, enveloped the action of each scene. It kept both its own secrets and the secrets of the survivors, hiding what needed to stay hidden.


But as the story moved away from its biggest and most mysterious character, the island itself, the show lost is luster. The story meandered in and out of compelling territory, but it was no longer beautiful to behold. Absent was the velvety rich backdrop, and I missed it dearly.
The island reasserted itself dramatically in the fifth episode of the fifth season, an episode called "This Place is Death". The story itself is mostly familiar territory to anyone who's ever watched the show at any point.

Sawyer, Locke, Juliet and the Freighter crew, Miles, Daniel Faraday, and Charlotte, are on a desperate hike through the wilds to the Orchid Station. Many scenes of the trek are shot from above, so our characters are swallowed by the shifting landscape, lost in a tangle of green. This position is dramatically reversed in the scene of Charlotte's death. We are placed at her level, prostrate on strange earth, terra incognita, and invited to share her last sights. The trees stretch above them, forming a lacy green ceiling, and both sides are lavishly cushioned with vegetation.

Both she and Daniel are almost lovingly embraced by the forest around them. But Nature is ultimately indifferent to their suffering, and the crew must leave her body to be returned to the improbable earth.
Season six had yet to provide as consistently beautiful an episode as any in season one until "Ab Aeterno", the ninth episode. Lost likes to keep its shots close, generally speaking. The landscape is most often a veil, our heroes move through it without a clear idea of where they're going. It is a maze, a trap, a series of small rooms, close quarters. In "Ab Aeterno", however, we're treated with gorgeous wide shots.

The island's emerald crags are washed with the pale light of the margins of the day, the ocean is a calm gray-blue, and Richard strides through, diminished to a dirty speck against his surroundings. It's one of the finest shots in Lost's history, and a perfect evocation of many of its themes. Richard, having come from something he doesn't understand, is poised to run towards something equally incomprehensible. For a moment we linger with Richard, alone in this strange place. This strange place at the moment seems different, it gleams gold, not bathed in its customary harsh midday light or its brooding chiascuro. It's as if the island is in a new age, fresh from an older, darker time. Valleys open up before us, sun streams through majestic trees, everything has a gilded edge. Taken at present, everything is beautiful. If only we could forget the blood that came before and the blood yet to be spilled, the island could be Eden rather than Hell.