The Work Of Anton Corbijn (Directors Label/Volume Six DVD)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B     Extras: B+     Videos: B+

 

 

After the classical eras of the Music Video ended in the mid-1980s, followed mostly by crass, overprocessed, awful junk clips for the most part in the wake of Michael Jackson’s commercial success, MTV and the music business regressed.  However, with record labels willing to spend money on film and Videos needing a new direction, a new generation of artistic directors were on the way and one of the very first of them was Anton Corbijn.

 

Though he became known as the director of all of Depeche Mode’s work and became one of the first known-by-name Music Video directors as a result, his work is much wider and wide-ranging than all his amazing work for that great band.  The Work Of Anton Corbijn has arrived on DVD from Palm Pictures and The Directors Label, a vital series of collections of important filmmakers who happen to work in the Videos field.  The Music Video clips on this disc, all in black and white unless otherwise noted, are:

 

 

Dr. Mabuse – This is the clip that put Corbijn on the map, a distillation of visuals from Fritz Lang’s early German period for the Propaganda.  He would soon develop his own unique black and white style.

 

Red Guitar – David Sylvian in another early clip, becoming part of a surrealistic desert, including flashbacks to childhood and a possible flash forward to old age.  Even early on, Corbijn was projecting film literally onto the mise-en-scene ala Andy Warhol, but making it into a signature of his own.

 

Seven Seas – Along with Depeche Mode, Corbijn did some fine Videos for Echo & The Bunnymen, who should have been as commercially successful in the U.S. market and are just now getting a new generational boost from the first cut of Donnie Darko.  This one is conscious of being on a play stage, though the band “travels” all over the world.

 

Quiet Eyes – Golden Earring needed to get a Video more memorable than Twilight Zone to continue their career and have another hit.  This fine clip did not produce another huge hit, but offers a visually impressive use of vertical stripes and twist on the usual live performance.

 

The Game – The other Echo & The Bunnymen clip is mostly in color, with the band simply paling around in Brazil.  Nicely done.

 

Behind The Wheel – One of Corbijn’s earliest successes with Depeche Mode, with Gahan as a guy who has his mini-car towed away (in reference to Jacques Tati), only to be picked up by a pretty girl on an old Vespa motor scooter.  She is also dressed in 1960s clothes.

 

Atmosphere (1.85 X 1) – A Video for the great band Joy Division attacks the iconography of The Klu Klux Klan beginning with the mixing of hooded white figures, with figures in black sheets. 

 

My Secret Place – Joni Mitchell’s duet with Peter Gabriel is an unusual clip for both, starting with a very dark black and white meant to reflect the theme of the song, which is a good one.  The outdoor shots of both are terrific.

 

Enjoy The Silence – Masterwork Video that announced Corbijn as a huge commercial force and announced a major new artistic direction for the art form to go into.  In begins with deep focus shot of the band in 16mm black and white, cut to rhythm with beautiful color snippets of various flowers (referencing the album cover of Violator (1990), where the song comes from), followed by the diffused color of a king walking an empty landscape with his folding chair.  This remains one of the most visually remembered Videos ever made.

 

One (director’s cut) – Gender, body image, identity and the way “dead labor” technology interferes with all is the theme of this clip for U2, presented here in Corbijn’s cut.  It works better than the butchered version, but is not the total success some fans like to think.  This is in an orange-chrome.

 

Straight To You – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds appear on stage in this full color clip has its visual diversity and offers another fine song by Cave.  It also happens to be part of a cycle at the time of stage-bound Videos by several artists and directors.

 

Walking In My Shoes – A later Depeche Mode clip that is more visually rich at the expense of being less abstract by mixing color and monochrome in a collage of images to match the songs’ spiritual quest.

 

Heart Shaped Box – Brilliant Video for Nirvana combines a series of provocative images in one of the band’s greatest moments.  This includes body parts, death, an old man on a crucifix, animals, an amazing performance in front of the camera by the band and impressionistic use of color.

 

Liar – Ever-impressive Henry Rollins clip about a sociopath who takes advantage of everyone’s kindness to the greatest extreme.  Rollins plays all the sides of the two-faced personality in one of his best works yet, while it is one of his best records to date, if not outright Hard Punk Rock classics.

 

Hero Of The Day – Metallica appropriately in a deconstruction of the Western genre, in black and white to boot is not bad.  A fan favorite.

 

Mama Said – Another Metallica video with the same theme, but in sepia-tones, a signature of old Westerns of the 1930s.  This time, cowboy hat-wearing lead singer James Hetfield drives through the city in a car.

 

Barrel Of The Gun – Dave Gahan becomes a personal focus in this Depeche Mode clip that launched another one of their comebacks, dealing with his own personal demons in this color clip.

 

It’s No Good (1.78 X 1) – Final Depeche Mode clip in this set has a gaudy, cheap live performance as if the band were lounge-playing unknowns.  The late 1960s into the 1970s is the time period, and it is very amusing.

 

Bleibt Alles Anders (1.66 X 1) – German singer Herbert Grönemeyer runs in color and swims in monochrome for this clip about trying to catch up with one’s self and time.  Good record, even if you do not understand one word of the singing.

 

Opus 40 – Buffalo, New York band Mercury Rev’s song is set to this black and white video that was also issued in color, with the lead singer David Baker dressed in a 1950s-styel spacesuit with 50s monster fingernails as part of the artifice of a deconstructively surreal shoot where you can see the staging.

 

Goodness On A Hiway (Version Two) – Mercury Rev in the middle of nowhere, shot sepia-toned, in another Western-themed clip by Corbijn.  This time, cars and The Statue Of Liberty play an amusing role.

 

In The Sun (1.66 X 1) – Joseph Arthur wears angel wings in this color full color clip as he wanders from his umbrella-staked beach blanket to the city.  Another simple, amusing, effective, fun clip that is also part of a cycle of angel-winged clips at the time.

 

Mensch – A great Herbert Grönemeyer clip that seems to be sending up a certain cola campaign with an ice cream cone in its place.  This includes a man dressed as a polar bear, who then leaves the studio and wanders to the beach.  Riot!

 

Electrical Storm – One of U2’s better clips of late, monochrome and set at a beach, where a couple (band member Larry Mullen Jr. and Samantha Morton (Code 46) as a mermaid of sorts) falls in love with each other.  I wish more U2 clips were this good, while this one is strikingly exceptional among all Videos.

 

Re-Offender (1.66 X 1) – The band Travis is trying to do a stage performance of the song at issue, but backstage fighting keeps getting in the way in this full color clip.  The fighting even gets into the streets, with mini-campers to boot.

 

All These Things That I’ve Done (1.66 X 1) – The Killers in another Western-themed Corbijn clip, which quickly turns into a story of love and conflict.  Reminds this critic of a print ad campaign for a jeans company that no longer exists.

 

 

 

Technically, the image is terrific on just about all these clips, though where the video white is a tad off and detail is slightly thinner, that suggests a slight generation down from the master source.  All are 1.33 x 1 except where otherwise indicated and none of the widescreen Videos are anamorphically enhanced.  That does not hurt their picture performance too much.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is often richer than in just about any case you are likely to encounter, with surrounds in some clips, for which you can experiment to hear which songs play back best which way.  This critic again prefers two-channel in these cases.

 

Videos missing included Art Of Noise’s Beatbox, three more from Echo & The Bunnymen (Bedbugs & Ballyhoo, Bring On The Dancing Horses, Lips Like Sugar), Johnny Cash’s Delia’s Gone, one of the two videos shot for Red Hot Chili Pepper’s My Friends (with a story about that too long to go into here) and the endless Depeche Mode videos that are just not going to fit here.  Front 242’s Front By Front short clip compilation is here, though the Headhunter clip is not here in its entirety.

 

Other extras include another great 56-page booklet with photos, illustrations, hand-written notes by Corbijn and a Corbijn interview conducted by Fran Healy, while the DVD has (almost) at least one excellent audio commentary track for each Video, a 40-minutes-long documentary about Corbijn called NotNa, MTV promos he shot staring Beck and Dave Grohl, making of U2’s Electrical Storm, “tour projections” for It’s No Good from Depeche Mode, excerpt from a film about Captain Beefheart himself Don van Vliet called Some Yo Yo Stuff, a “home made” video for Love Will Come Through by Travis that is entertaining and Corbijn’s first-ever Video: a clip for Hockey by Palas Schaumburg included on purpose for its roughness.  That rounds out a great disc, but you can read more about Corbijn’s underrated feature film debut Control (about the band Joy Division) at this link:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/7132/Control+++Joy+Division+(2007

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo