Dance with Death: Interpreting the symbolism of Arya and the pale horse

The sequence begins with the camera pointed up into a gray sky full of falling white ash. The camera tilts down to to reveal Arya, battered and bloody and suffering from shock, rising into frame from what appears to be an offscreen place she had fallen. Her face is gray with ash and streaked with blood like warpaint; she’s a pale, ashen figure staggering through a pale, ashen landscape.

The soundtrack is roaring but quiet: soft music, a low thunder of stunned silence and the crackle of fire, something of a jolt after the cacophony of the previous sequence where Jaime and Cersei Lannister die in the thunderous collapsing ruins of the Red Keep. Small sounds like breathing, horse snorts, hoof stamps, bridle jingles and Arya’s soothing whispers are amplified. Everything echoes.

The tightness of the shot framing and the close-up, intimate sound of her breathing…all this signals that we’re going to witness what’s coming from her perspective. We get the feeling that she’s just “awoken,” and coming to her senses, able to fully absorb the horrors around her.

Was Arya knocked out and laying unconscious for a period of time? The camera frame is interesting in this shot: it’s swinging with Arya’s movements rather than her movements swinging within the frame. This gives the viewer a feeling that she is floating, like she’s in a state of lightheadedness or that her body is somehow detached from the world around her.

This over-the-shoulder shot reinforces the sense of her point-of-view.

Another tight closeup.

Arya pauses, surrounded by an apocalyptic landscape of rubble, ash, scorched corpses and fire. It’s easy to equate her environment with the concept of hell, or a version of hell. She looks down.