This Is My Least Favourite Life - A Sequence from True Detective

I remember the effect this scene from the first episode of the second season of the TV-series True Detective had on me when I was watching it for the first time. In the beginning of this introductory sequence I was in suspense about the exact whereabouts of the characters, played by the actors Colin Ferrell as "Ray" Velcoro and Vince Vaughn as Frank Semyon with a great cameo and music by singer Lera Lynn. Are they sitting across each other? Are they looking at each other? Or are they sitting apart from each other and having an internal dialogue with themselves?

For me, they were each sitting each in their own niche at a table, only juxtaposed by the cuts, but separated by physical space.

I think it is a great example of how to introduce a relationship between two characters by using mood, cutting and setting. It is made clear that they are sitting across each other with the slow tracking camera move following the waitress from the singer to the corner table almost exactly one minute into the scene. Even then the director is trying to hide the exact location of Colin Farrell's character to the very last second, by placing a bystander at the bar in front of him.
From that moment on, the sequence takes on another meaning, as the viewer tries to decipher what could be going on between the characters. There is something very intense with the characters simply looking at each other.

The visual staging supports the conception of something being off here, both are having their heads constantly in an oblique angle, changing from a frontal to a three-quarter position, looking above and side-wards. The use of props is great, while Ray is smoking in a grand manner that is making up an important part of the act, Frank in contrast is very subtly playing around with his whiskey glass, looking side-wards using half-blinks. There is something very determined and self-conscious but also lost about Ray, while Frank seems to be more reserved and careful, almost anticipating. In the course of the show we will learn that Ray, just as Frank, as a inclination towards heavy violence, but also that Ray has been manipulating him.  I ask myself if we learn in this scene, that Frank is actually afraid of Ray, who seems unpredictable to him.

The entire build-up of the mood collapses in itself as the two start talking business. All the internal dialogues end and they have to deal again with what is on the table.