Week 26.03 - Socials Roundup MIRRORS!
12 Jan - 18 Jan 2026: Shots Reflecting Women and Guns (and other things which make movies)
Week 26.03 posts include reflecting shots from The Woman in Question (1950); Ten Pound Poms (2023-2025); Giri/Haji (2019); Hell Drivers (1957); and Justified (2010-2015).
The Woman in Question
This film is all about different perspectives or a person and a murder — the alternate title is Five Angles on Murder — so it makes sense it would use a lot of mirrors to get different angles on Agnes / Astra (Jean Kent).
Fittingly, the mirror is used differently in different stories; sometimes to look at Agnes, sometimes at the person behind her, lit differently in daylight and night, etc.
Justified
This short, tense exchange between Mags Bennet (Character Actress Margo Martindale) and Loretta McCready (Kaitlyn Dever) in Justified 2.13 “Bloody Harlan” uses the thin bar mirror a few different ways.
First the mirror is established in the context of the room (photo 1, below); then the mirror is used to keep us aware of where Loretta stays as Mags pours a drink (photos 2 and 3); Mags has no problem keeping her back to Loretta most of the time, even as she pours [what she and we know to be] a poisoned glass.
The shots continue to use the mirror for a reveal of what Loretta pulling a gun, even as we are still ‘with’ Mags.
Finally the episode cuts back into the same shot — Loretta and her gun in-focus in the mirror (photo 4) — for the dramatic pull back to Mags as she finally turns to face Loretta.
Ten Pound Poms
This show uses a lot of rearview mirrors and three-way mirrors, as well as prism’d glass to reveal a dream.
They go so far as to give Terry and Annie (Warren Brown and Faye Marsay) a three-way mirror in their room, the better to display when they are disagreeing and so feel apart even when they are together (top) or torn as to what to do next (bottom).
This week’s longreads were also all about mirrors.
See our practical breakdown of keeping eyelines in Dead Lesbians, and look at the emotional impact of framing in mirrors in Blackout.
Giri/Haji
Giri/Haji Ep 5 also uses bathroom mirrors in three scenes quite close together to show three characters attempting to make decisions.
First, we see Donna (Sophia Brown) in Vickers’s bathroom, trying to decide whether or not she should turn on / kill Vickers. She’s shown not only in the main mirror, but Vickers’ wife’s makeup mirror, showing her debating herself.
Sarah (Kelly Macdonald) is also torn about her feelings about a gangster, only she’s unsure whether she should help him or not. She stares at herself in her own bathroom, the dividing line of her medicine cabinet mirror showing her own internal division.
Finally, a little later also in Sarah’s bathroom, we see Rodney (Will Sharpe); a character who has made up his mind even though he is not thrilled about it. This scene changes it up a bit; he’s not divided, he’s made up his mind, he just is a bit scared, and the shot racks from one face to the other, even as he avoids looking at himself.
Taken all by themselves, these mirror shots are nice, but seen them one after another in short order really drives home how this episode is about characters attempting to make decisions, enact their choices, and avoid the ramifications . . . whether or not they can do that last part, we soon find out.
Hell Drivers
Like the aforementioned Blackout, this scene from Hell Drivers shifts camera and characters to use the mirror to show Tom and Gino (Stanley Baker and Herbert Lom) in different configurations as they try to figure out what they think of each other, and decide whether they will be enemies or friends.
The crux is: we can see both their faces, and we know they can see each others’ faces.
