Last week, Explosions in the Sky released a video for their song 'Postcards from 1952', which features a series of almost-stills and slow motion sequences that capture: the essence of life, being human, young, growing old, and the beauty and conflict in our inter-personal relationships... pretty much all of the things that one might expect from real art.
The video's directors (Peter Simonite and Annie Gunn, according to the Youtube post) cleverly use the song's structure (a slow start, building up over the course of the song to a cathartic crescendo then fade at the end) as a metaphor for life's progress.
The two main time-frames in the video are: the progress of the bubble to the little girl (which takes the almost the length of the video), and the duration of the camera's flash, which corresponds to the duration of the song's climax. These two durations come to an end at the same moment, with the bursting of the bubble, the extinguishing of the camera's flash, marking the beginning of the outtro in which the child's disappointment is turned to curiosity again with the birth of a new bubble and the loving smile of the mother.
It's all good stuff, and I'm going to recommend to you this song - and every song - by Explosions in the Sky :)
Links:
Explosions in the Sky's official website - http://www.explosionsinthesky.com
Bella Union's site - http://bellaunion.com
Bella Union is an awesome record label started by two members of the Cocteau Twins in the 1990s.
