In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week we look at Phoebe Bridger's Lost Boys, directed by Lance Oppenheim.
Lance Oppenheim currently is the most buzzy name in film, thanks to his one-two-punch of Primetime and You Can See Everything. While a few months ago people predicted Oscar buzz for the former, a film about To Catch A Predator-presenter Chris Hansen, it turns out that the latter, just announced a few months ago, is actually the main ticket for a golden statue for Oppenheim. The documentary, in which comedian Nathan Fielder, together with Oppenheim investigates, and gets access to the life of well known alleged fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, has the whole world talking. It pushes the documentary form to its breaking point, which is not surprising for those who have seen Oppenheim's earlier documentary work. Or his sole music video, also released this year(!), for that matter.
In Lance Oppenheim's work there is always this stylistic distancing that makes you wonder how much of it is an on-the-fly-shoot, and how much of it is re-enactment. Especially Some Kind of Heaven and his tv-documentary series Ren Faire use highly subjective points of view, and stylistic tableaux vivants, that feel like they interfere with the immediate truthfulness of the form. But as everybody knows, every documentary is highly subjective, and Oppenheim is just that bit more honest about it, if the reviews of You Can See Everything (which hasn't released in my country yet) are to be believed.
His music video for Phoebe Bridgers' Lost Boys (see below) ain't a documentary at all, going into fantasy-mode. It takes a page from the playbook of George A. Romero's Knightriders, showing a community of bike-riding knights in shining armor, who follow a waify enchantress played by Bridgers. She entices a new knight, played by Skyler Gisondo, who starred with Bridgers in Oppenheim's Primetime. It goes full-blast ethereal surrealism at the end, a far cry from Oppenheim's documentary work, but also not that far removed from some of the flights of fancy in Ren Faire, which shares a similar setting to boot. And thematically, Lost Boys follows Oppenheim's obsessions to a tee.
Most of the films and the music video for that matter focus on the role of the individual in the collective. Who gets trust from our communities and who does not, is the key to Primetime, and going by subject matter You Can See Everything. The role of the individual to the collective is also a prime matter in Ren Faire and Some Kind of Heaven, which follow close-knit communities, and at the same time people whose relationships with those communities are on tenterhooks. In the case of Lost Boys we see the knightrider-community through two lenses, first focusing on the witchy nymph, and later on her new acolyte. He is taken up in the new community, although it isn't very clear what his exact fate is.
Another focus of Oppenheim, like in Spermworld, Ren Faire and Some Kind of Heaven is the idea that these communities can themselves by subsets of society, small bubbles in a larger whole. In Spermworld it is people seeking sperm donors outside of the system of sperm banks and its regulations; Ren Faire is about the biggest renaissance faire in the United States; while Some Kind of Heaven focuses on idyllic yet dystopian retirement villages in Florida. All of these are about people flocking together in ways that are outside of the norm, trying to find a better way of building community out of the confines of what society at large seems acceptable or normal.
While Lost Boys puts a fictional fantastical twist on this, it is clearly made by the same visionary. Lost Boys shows Oppenheim pushing beyond the limits of his earlier work, as does You Can See Everything if the reviews are to be believed. He seems like a filmmaker who wants to push himself to the limit of his own ruleset. He is a true iconoclast voice, an exciting one, in the same way his subjects often are rulebreakers, weirdos and boundarypushers, for better or worse. That he explores these fringe figures with compassion, while still being critical is his strongest suit as a director. Be they sperm donors, fraudulent CEOs or esoteric elven ladies, they all become multilayered, interesting figures in the hands of Oppenheim.