The Privacy Of Heartbreak

My friend Milana posted this music video by Gotye on Facebook late on Monday evening. Take a look:



Simply wonderful, isn't it?

To me it represents everything a pop-promo should be: engaging, interesting, original and memorable. And if that wasn't enough, it also enhances the song, raising it to a new level.

So I'm not going to waffle on about the track. Instead I'm going to focus on the video...

...In which the director (Natasha Pincus) did a fantastic job of truly embodying the privacy of the song in subtle but real human nuances.

The fact that they're both naked: bearing themselves completely in front of each other, a moment of total honesty and openness, the complexity of their relationship with each other represented in dull-toned geometric shapes, like a window fractured by shock.

A shock that quickly envelopes them, covering them in these same dull shapes until they're so warped by their emotions that their memory has also become fractured, blurring the lines as to who is the victim and who is the perpetrator.

But of course neither had one distinct role. We discover through the lyrics that each played both characters at different times, such is the truth and complexity that occurs in relationships built on intensity and fueled by strong emotions.

Just look at the sadness she emanates that so very nearly brims over into anger. It tells us of her heartbreak. Again, that she is as much of a victim as he is. It reminds us of what so much of Hollywood ignores in what it is like to love. This extra dimension allows us to make up our own minds as to what led to the situation we're now witness to.

Watch their eyes, their shoulders.

Watch the way that he moves his head away from hers when she tells him "I don't want to live that way/reading into every word you say." He's clearly flinching from an ugly emotion: a memory of an argument or perhaps his shame in finding out he made her feel belittled. That simple little movement says so much.

This video is full of those moments and this instantly creates a mood that is deep enough to run through the whole four and a bit minutes the song lasts.

And I'll happily sit through them again and again and again.
Viva La Gotye. Viva Natasha Pincus.