FRACTURES - IT'S ALRIGHT
- Directed by Matthew Chuang -
In his music video for Fractures’ “It’s Alright”, the director Matthew Chuang opens up the doors to Chernobyl in an intriguing story about reflection, memory and the loss of innocence. Throughout this emotional rollercoaster of images, we delve into a world in which beauty is created from destruction, in which memory reawakens and the past creeps into the present.
Especially commendable is the cinematography of the music video, which is picturesque and surreal, unveiling Chuang’s picture album of the past to us. We start out with a series of installations establishing the setting of the video – empty, lonely, destroyed spaces buried in rubble. Worthy to note is Chuang’s decision not to add any camera movement to his frames. This simultaneously reflects the absence of life in Chernobyl and imitates the action of opening up a picture album filled with framed stills, which is also highlighted in the framing of one frame (a window pane, a door, a wall etc.) within the frame of the camera.
The first time we see our character, his face is reflected in a mirror amongst a pile of rubble and a peeling wall. The choice of misé-en-scene goes well with the idea of a picture album as we look into a frame captured within the frame of the camera. The mirror frames the man’s face, which may depict him as belonging to this location and it being part of its past (similar to a memory in a photo album). However, the choice of framing could also be interpreted as the old man’s literal reflection on his past and the entrapment that he feels by recalling it.
It is noticeable that the old man is initially portrayed in silhouette, from the back, or from wide-angle shots. His face is purposefully hidden, as if he is a ghost, strolling through the building and reminiscing about the broken history of the location. It appears as though Chuang chooses to illustrate him as a caricature of the past, representing a population rather than an individual. The first time the old man’s face is revealed, the focus is purposefully set on the background. Thus, he is blurred into the images of destruction. This not only serves to illustrate that the focus lies on the effect the location has had on its people, but also defaces the man until later on in the video.
A shot, which I find particularly effective in capturing the aforementioned concepts, is of the old man walking in a hallway filled with brisk, cold light. The framing again resembles a picture frame as we glance through the frames of a broken window at the man’s silhouette walking. This powerful shot depicts a man returning to his shattered past to me. The same concept is again repeated as our protagnoist observes a collection of fractured paintings on multiple bright glass windows, as if these are portraits from his memory.
The first time we truly witness the man’s face is when he glances up from reading a book in the destroyed library. This is a key moment when the story of the video is thematically communicated – reliving, observing and reading into the past. As the story in the video develops, it appears that the old man used to go to school at this location; that this was a part of his childhood and youth. The innocence of this memory is brutally stripped away by the destruction. Ironically, fragments of youth remain in the images of flowers and animals painted on the walls, as well as in the rusty cribs. These are contrasted with the man’s age and the images of destruction and death, which surround him.
The extreme close-up of the man crying is followed by the shot of him playing with the bird and imitating its flight is what affected me the most throughout this video. Despite the man’s play and his attempts at assimilating and accepting past experiences, the reality of what Chernobyl has become lingers within the place and memory leaves scars rooted deep within, which cannot be undone.
The origami bird, which the man creates, may potentially symbolize creation amongst destruction or freedom from the weight of the past. However, the wings of the bird have been broken by the past, and it will never truly fly again.
Towards the end of the video, it appears that despite the old man’s optimistic attempts to delve into his history and youth, the pain and sorrows catch up with him and his wounds reopen. Ultimately, he realizes that he is alone, that his family and friends have passed away, that the experiences he imitated through his actions will never again take place and that the past can be recalled but not replayed to be identical.
