DARREN ARONOFSKY MADE A TERRIBLE VIDEO FOR LOUTALLICA’S “THE VIEW”

December 5th, 2011 at 10:00am
Axl Rosenberg

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After it was announced that director visionary director Darren Aronofsky would be helming a music video for Loutallica’s completely unlistenable piece of shit “The View,” I was optimistic that Aronofsky would come up with something that would be superior to the song itself. I don’t think I was alone in harboring this hope. I haven’t loved all of Aronofsky’s films — The Fountain and Black Swan were both pretty lousy, and, no, I don’t give two fucks how many awards the latter film won — but the guy’s work is usually, at the very least, thought-provoking. He has a unique point of view, and, really, what more can you ask for from an artist? Some people will inevitably love or hate the creator’s work, so, really, the creator’s responsibility is to be, for lack of a better term, interesting. It is, ultimately, the bare minimum we should require of artists, and the single thing so many of them completely fail to do. But whatever you want to say about Aronofsky, you can’t deny that the guy has a vision; he’s got heart, he’s got soul.

That’s why his video for “The View” is such a goddamn bummer. ‘Cause it’s really just a performance video. Is it slightly prettier than most performance videos? Sure. Aronofsky’s regular cinematographer, Matthew Libatique — who has been one of the director’s regular collaborators way back since π — is no slouch. But most of the imagery isn’t really that original or stimulating. Really, the “homemade,” handheld nature of it — that kind of “indie” quality — isn’t that far off from, say, a commercial for Levi’s jeans. Y’know, like this one:

And I guess that kinda makes sense — in the end, a music video is a commercial. But it can be a better commercial than this. Aronofsky can direct a better commercial than this. I know he can for a fact, ’cause he directed these, which, though morbid to a truly laughable degree, are nonetheless extremely memorable: