the groove tube work crews
by adrien begrand

11.04.05





two years after the debut of the acclaimed directors label dvd series, the latest installment continues to shine the spotlight on the finest talent in music video directing.

mark romanek creates worlds in the form of music videos. as with the works of guy maddin or the brothers quay, characters-in romanek’s case, various immortals of pop music-congregate in a vivid headspace, thwarting attempts to connect them to a ‘real’ world. alas, romanek’s little video ecosystems evaporate when the three-and-a-half-minute pop song they’re propagating gives way to a commercial for tampons. one would hope, though, that they’re metaphysically accessible via some sort of psychotropic substance, or maybe even a dvd. but of course. this fall, the best of romanek’s work gets the auteur treatment on palm pictures’ directors label series, with a 56-page booklet, fawning celebrity featurettes, and a slot in a box set with fellow video luminaries anton corbijn, jonathan glazer, and stéphane sednaoui.

the directors label series volumes 1-3 presented the short form oeuvres of chris cunningham, spike jones, and michel gondry, gathering the videos and commercials of two directors who had taken the leap into feature-length film, and one-cunningham-whose limited body of work bore the stamp of a meticulous and formidable visual pervert. in vols, 4-7, corbijn occupies the role of prolific grand master, with vids from his beloved u2 and who’s who of moody gay britpop 80’s bands. glazer’s volume is all over the map, with commercials and excerpts from his films sexy beast and birth, putting his range on display at the expense of any overriding aesthetic principle. sednaoui fulfills the gondry role this time, satisfying our bias for perplexing video art by eccentric french directors. although he has the feature one hour photo to his credit, romanek stands apart from his peers as one whose embrace of music videos as their own art form is total. the guys might be remembered for the movies the will no doubt go on to direct; romanek seems happy enough with about three minutes and one-song soundtrack to tell his stories.

you don’t hire mark romanek to make your band look charming. you hire him to make your band look like shit, or reborn, or dangerous, or all of the above. johnny cash, in the video for ‘hurt’, sings in profile and faces death head on. as he moans trent reznor’s lyrics through his stroke-disabled mouth, surrounded by memorabilia, cash’s wife, june carter cash, observes the proceedings with love and acceptance of mortality in harmonious equilibrium. we don’t expect to be unsettled like this by a music video. we expect visual gimmicky with young men and guitars and chicks with slo-mo backsides. we don’t expect to watch a man dump his red wine over his treasures, his hand quivering with age, agonizing over a song like he’s providing the musical entertainment at his own funeral. and we certainly don’t expect, while channel surfing, to stumble upon this legend of american music covering a song penned by a fellow who most famously declared he’d like to fuck us like an animal.

and so then there are gateways from the world of ‘hurt’ to the worlds of both trent reznor and cash re-energizer rick rubin, worlds as singular as the man in black holds court. for reznor this means the defining video of his career, “closer” in which romanek had him suspended above a toy piano, ball-gagged, and intercut with faux 19th century traveling-freak-show footage. it’s to romanek’s credit that he was able to transform some of the most blunt and dumb lyrics in the 90’s alternative music into an era-spanning anthem of sadomasochism. imagine how silly mr. nine inch nails would have looked had the video featured him crotch-thrusting in hot topic vinyl pants and studded gauntlets. by inserting the industrial wunderkind into a fetid brown palate of cruelties in the realm of joel-peter witkin, the director defined the artist as a practitioner of antique perversities. it’s a neat trick, translating the most computer-bound of contemporary industrial rock stars as someone who could have talked shop with rasputin at the czar’s summer cottage.

we mentioned rick rubin. there he is, with his facial hair of the gods, riding beside jay-z through brooklyn in ’99 problems.’ this is a long way from johnny cash’s tennessee estate, or from the dungeon where reznor yabbers about penetrating us. lesser directors would have developed jay-z’s hometown travelogue into a neatly summarized storyline, but this video embraces the paradox of hip-hop: the best mc’s are those whose tales are rooted in the real, while they reserve the right to demand that we consider these narratives as utter fiction. there are motorbike showdowns, shakings of booty, a tribal performance artist in a subway stop, and a shooting in which our narrator goes down in a hail of exploding squids. romanek seems to have demarcated a zone in the song between what is real (the neighborhood jay-z grew up in, shot in black and white) and what is patently ironic (vegan rick rubin, sporting furs). he’s toying with us here, asking us to sort out what’s braggadocio, what’s a reenactment, and what is documentary. meanwhile the video’s protagonist emphasizes that he’s got a lot of problems, but thankfully no bitch-related ones. if only we all had problems like jay-z. then, as the video reaches the zenith of amusement, the director throws us shots of incarcerated black men lined up nude in the showers. so much for fretting over the question of realism. this shit feels real enough for a hundred films.


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