Sound And Vision: Justin Kurzel
In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week we look at two surprising music videos from Justin Kurzel.
When you think of Justin Kurzel you immediately will be reminded of grim, gritty and violent films like Nitram , The True History of the Kelly Gang and Snowtown, films that put the truthful and criminal in 'true crime'. His approach is steeped in a sense of realism that fully immerses you in the lives of these criminal characters, without any overt outside judgment. He approaches this real life inspiration in a way that feels not only realistic but more overtly impressionistic. In a film like Nitram especially there is the sense that the downward decline of the lead character dictates the camerawork and editing of the films.
If not dabbling in True Crime, Kurzel likes to approach violent historical epics in pretty much the same way: steeped in the mud and clay the characters live in, the abrasive violence of the time punching through the muddled colors and dour setting, breaking the grim mundanity of medieval life, like in his adaptation of Macbeth. Even his game adaptation action adventure Assassins Creed uses the same approach. The action setpieces are here to distract from the fact that Kurzel wants to do some historical world building on a grand scale. So he indulges in things like having the dialogue be almost half spoken in Spanish and Arabic, which in the mind of English speaking audiences might as well be a death sentence for the box office of the film. It was.
So it might be a surprise that the two music videos Kurzel made don't fit easily in those two genres, but instead opt for a very different genre that seems very unusual for the director: they are performative dance pieces.
You Am I's Friend Like You has the band play in a high school gym while a group of teen cheerleaders perform around them. The central performance is cut to shreds by the editing, which focuses closely on details: arms swinging, legs swaggering. The band is caught in a whirlwind performance of white leotards and bodyparts.
Bridezilla's Western Front seems heavily inspired by the stand-out scene in Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth, of just the year before.
In it, a family gathering is the setting of an involved interpretative dance piece. The cutaways to unfazed family members, including a decrepit looking patriarch, undercut the dance on purpose. This is a real life setting clashing with an absurd performance piece and Kurzels approach is to let this play out in a way that is droll and realistic in equal measure.
What these music videos have in common with the films, outside of their different genres, is the sense of style. Kurzel loves his washed-out colors, draining the image of color in shades of sepia and subtle grayish hues. The camerawork too favors a certain sense of everyday life. It stays close to the characters, not only to engage us in their personal perspectives, but also to obscure the bigger picture. The characters are often adrift and lost in his films, a part of the crowd but also apart of it. The music videos are no different. There is a sense of rhythm to the realism of Nitram and Snowtown, using the personal perspectives of the characters as a sort of beat. A beat that feels like a punch to the face. There is a grim musicality to the violent overwhelm of Kurzels heightened realism.
Justin Kurzel often uses high concepts, and then tweaks them to be as realistic as possible, but he also lets the rhythm of the characters dictate the editing. These two videos might seem quite different at first, but they operate on the same level. Kurzels characters march to the beat of their own drum, for better or worse. Kurzel does too.
