A Third Video For Arcade Fire's 'Afterlife'?
Are you kidding me? How many ‘Afterlife’ videos does Arcade Fire expect to release? First there was the one re-soundtrack-ing the film ‘Black Orpheus’, then the Spike Jonze-directed and Greta Gerwing-danced video for the Youtube Awards, and now this one, directed by Canadian filmmaker Emily Kai Bock and produced by the Creators Project. But if you had only one to watch, I would say, watch this later one.
It’s almost 8 minute long and works like a mini-movie following a Latino family, the father struggling to raise his two sons while his wife has obviously passed away. The video navigates between light and darkness, his sons are going through a series of rebirth and even baptism, while father/Orpheus is looking for his Eurydice in the darkest areas, finally finding her in his dreams, bathing in light on a deck facing the ocean that separates the dead from the living.
Think what you want about Arcade Fire, fantastic or over-hyped band? Cool or pretentious? Imaginative bunch of people or over-zealous ones who impose a dress code for their shows? But there is a good chance you are gonna be moved by this video if you are human, it’s simple but sweet and sad, emotional but not cheesy, poignant all the way through, and this little kid is so helplessly cute!
And this guy (may be a Mexican emigrant) could be any people I see each morning in the streets in Los Angeles, as the video seemed to have been filmed in a familiar neighborhood. It’s an unexpected turn for the Canadian band, or may be it’s not as their first choice for the song, and even the whole album, was Marcel Camus’ Brazilian adaptation of the Orpheus myth. It’s Greek mythology transcending ages and cultures once again, and Orpheus has never been so real.
