Cate Blanchett is the shapeshifting star of Massive Attack’s new video for “The Spoils” ft. Hope Sandoval. Through numerous different lighting setups, Blanchett’s bust is reduced and simplified, from living and breathing human with feelings and fears, to something more ancient and unwavering. The video taps into our darkest fears, and assigns a face to each each of them. It’s confrontational and powerful, breaking the fourth wall, and then disappearing back behind it.
Passing through the digital, ethereal, and the very real, Blanchett transforms before our eyes, from human to pixels, to muscle and bone, and eventually to lifeless stone. The video is a lurching, slow-burning, dramatic comment on our never-ending path towards eternity, and the reassuring feeling that this is nothing new. If nothing else, Blanchett’s IMDB page can now be updated so that it reads she played the part of an Easter Island statue.
It’s directed by John Hillcoat, the grim philosophical powerhouse behind modern cautionary tales The Road, Lawless and the quietly unsettling promo for Nick Cave’s lovelorn Jubilee Street. “The Spoils” is a joint release with “Come Near Me,” featuring Ghostpoet, which arrived last week with a similarly haunting video, below.
Credits
Text Tom Ivin