In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week: How To Destroy Angels' The Space In Between, directed by Rupert Sanders.
Rupert Sanders likes his liquids thick and his protagonists immortal. Allow me to back that statement up: the director of special effects bonanzas thus far has directed three different feature films, none of them based on original properties. Snow White and the Huntsman is an effective retelling of the original fairytale with more than a dash of inspiration from Studio Ghibli thrown in there. Ghost in the Shell is a beautiful-looking adaptation of the anime classic that fundamentally misunderstood the original's philosophies and the wishes of its fanbase. The Crow is a-sort-of-adaptation of the original The Crow comic, that is sort-of-more-faithful than the Alex Proyas-adaptation. There is little in these three outings that suggests returning obsessions or themes. But somehow Rupert Sanders finds a way to lean hard on two visual flourishes in all three of his feature films: the first of those is that of overflowing liquids.
In Snow White and the Huntsman we find this visual imagery in the milky-white rejuvenation-cure of Charlize Theron's antagonist, and in her gold-liquid mirror that eventually drapes into the resemblance of a silhouette. In Ghost in the Shell we witness the birth of Major, the protagonist, in another milky white liquid bath. And the whiteness gives way to a pure black void in The Crow, in which the protagonist goes through a similar rebirthing process, this time the liquid bath being a thick oily drab.
The second trope that returns in all three ties into this notion of rebirth. All features have protagonists that are somewhere between living and dead, mortal and immortal. The queen in Snow White and the Huntsman needs her rejuvenation baths, made from the life power of young nubile women, to prolong her life. Major herself, in Ghost in the Shell, is in between robot and human, and her rebirth leads to a next step in the evolution of brain-repurposing. A way to cheat death. And The Crow? Well, that is kind of the whole spiel of the franchise, ain't it?
This is a large preamble to talk about one of two music videos I could verify were directed by Rupert Sanders. The first of which, even though I have a soft spot of the song, doesn't really fit the grand Sanders-thesis. Five's Slam Dunk (Da Funk) is little more than the five teen heartthrobs posturing in a basketball court with flashing lights. It is his music video for How To Destroy Angels' The Space in Between that really drives home these themes though. (Side-note: curiously both music videos start with a very similar hallway).
Liquid spilling over is everywhere in this video, and the way Rupert Sanders lets his camera float over the surfaces of the spilt substances is bordering on fetishization. In a hotel room there are many images that hint at a crime. From the slightly left ajar door, to the water spilling over the sink, to the blood on a stiletto, this is bad news. The blood, the wine, the water, the way in which Sanders focuses on liquids give way to the notion that he sees these substances as a life force. Human beings are 70% water after all. And this liquid being spilled is an apt metaphor for the brutal death at the center here. But the thing is: the half-space between living and death shows up here too. The corpse being burned up in the hotel room is very much wide-eyed and half-alive, singing while she is destroyed together with the room. A living-dead witness to her own demise. It is an audacious video, quite haunting. And it fits together nicely with Sanders' usual obsessions and visual effects trickery. Even though the critiques lobbed at Ghost in the Shell are very well deserved, Sanders is an underrated director, honing in on his craft and themes through seemingly work-for-hire-set-ups. If this music video proves anything is that there is an auteurist voice hidden somewhere into his 'Metteur en scène'-approach to filmmaking.