This entire video has a split screen. It's made for wide screen video players. On the left we mostly follow a woman as she gets ready to leave from work, which is at some restaurant in a big city. On the right we're in a big apartment where Semisonic practices. The woman is wearing street clothes so I'm not sure what her job is. She uses a oddly placed pay phone to call somebody. The camera on the right rotates until we see a phone and answering machine. Yep, these two screens are related. The song starts and it's a slow, kind of sad song about closing time at a bar. Basically, time to go! One of the band members finally goes for the phone but he's too late. He briefly rights down whatever message she left as she closes the place for good.
The woman washes up and puts on some chap stick before she finally leaves. Meanwhile the song picks up a little. It still has a sad tone, but it's now a bittersweet sad as lead singer and guitarist tells us who he wants to go home with. I.E., the woman he's singing to. He tells her to take his drunk butt home. OK, so maybe I'm a little biased against people who drink.
The bartender or whoever is telling everybody to go home is still doing so. The place won't reopen until much later, so OUT! Gather your stuff. Go towards the exits. Scram. Think of it as a journey if you have to. Meanwhile as the restaurant is closed for good, lead singer checks his watch. What follows is these two searching out for each other. It would be a comedy of errors if the song wasn't so bittersweet. These two places aren't far apart, because we see singer on the left side before long. As he finds out the place is closed, woman shows up on the right side during the breakdown. The other band members just shrug at her inquiries and she leaves. Can this relationship be saved? Meanwhile the right side is following a cyclists legs. This goes on for just long enough that lead singer is back at the apartment rocking out. "Hey man, your girl was here." "She was? Let me rock out first before I ask you where she went."
On the left screen we're now following the woman's legs. See, you shouldn't hire me as a cameraman. Hey lead singer, are you going to let your gal wonder around the streets of a big city at night alone? I guess not, because he finally concludes the breakdown and the band all wonder outside. Woman wonders around until she sees a star, and turns around and walks through a crowd. Lead singer wonders around like a dork. At one point they almost run into each other as lead singer goes from right to left screen in a second. Finally lead singer just walks up to his band members who are waiting at the blue car at the right screen. Lead singer simply shrugs. Sniff. Can this relationship be saved?
This is a damn good song. When I first watched the video I just focused on the story. I didn't notice anything about the song itself other than it had a sad tone. When I finally listened to it I noticed it had a more bittersweet tone. The video actually avoids using a bar but fits the song.
The awesome thing is this video's gimmick, which is the one long take using two cameras. It's fun watching both point of views instead of cutting back and forth between the two. It even gives us a chance to see how close they are by how long it takes them to go from one side to the other.
1 comment:
You're right about the awesome thing.
You are also right that it's a damn good song. Want to hear something that will make it even awesomer? I was mostly indifferent to it until I heard this and then it put a whole new shine on it:
The bar is a womb. This isn't just a bittersweet song about drunks going home. This is a song about being born. Puts whole new meaning into previously throwaway (and grammatically odd) lines like "time for you to go out to the places you will be from" and "this room won't be open 'till your brothers or your sisters come."
Of course, even the guy who wrote it admits that the meaning shifts back and forth between the literal meaning and the symbolic one-- you would hope nobody involved in the symbol would be drinking whiskey or beer-- but that's ok. It is, as you said, a damned good song.
Welp! That wraps up this one! You did a great job this year Tork. \\high five
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