A post from Big Screen Little Screen turned me onto a music video created by Kanye West’s editor, Derrick Lee, using footage of 2046 for Kanye’s “Flashing Lights.”
It’s almost sacrilege to not watch this in High Definition, but the video remix still shames the original Spike Jonze helmed spot.
I couldn’t say it better myself. Wong Kar Wai’s 2046 is a long, visually indulgent meditation of love in bad timing, grief and the futility of anything else in life to play love’s substitute. In some way, Derrick Lee’s editing was able to grab the essence of love lost in what you might call a world of “affluent dystopia.” A hyper-realized city, like Tokyo or LA, where lives and opportunity are crammed together so tightly it would seem that making connections would be easy, but it’s only become harder. Human intimacy is the new luxury nobody can afford, but people spin their wheels faster. They collide but never connect. In short, repurposing footage from 2046 for “Flashing Lights” brought new meaning to a song I’d normally switch off.
Halfway through the video it was obvious Wong Kar Wai’s footage made the original Spike Jonze video–which Kanye and Co. probably paid a small fortune for–obsolete. I immediately tried to investigate whether or not the rights holders for 2046 had sanctioned the use of the footage, but I found nothing. If it was used “illegally,” that means an amazing music video cost Kanye the price of a smart editor’s day rate.
Considering slow, visually sumptuous work, like Kar Wai’s, is relegated to the art house, it would serve pop music to repurpose more artistically outstanding footage for their videos and expose their audience to a new visual language. In turn, directors like Kar Wai would reach new audiences and fulfill Werner Herzog’s directive laid down in Werner Herzog Eats his Boot (see below).
A civilization is doomed or going to die out like dinosaurs if it does not develop an adequate language or adequate images.
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SpoutBlog » Paul Moore