“My idea was to follow a couple, constantly tracking left to right, as one partner charges boldly forward and the other, progressively anxious, becomes increasingly reluctant to follow,” said Michelle Zauner
Michelle Zauner turned a lifelong rumination on loss into a cinematic capsule in Japanese Breakfast‘s “Picture Window” music video. “I wanted this video to feel like a short film,” the musician shared about the visual, which stars Omega from Balming Tiger and Gyuri Kim. Filmed while Zauner, who directed the video, was living in Seoul last year, “Picture Window” follows the pair as they play tug of war with the passage of time.
“Ever since I was a young girl I’ve dealt with intrusive thoughts of loved ones dying horrible deaths,” Zauner said in a statement. “When someone is running late or they’ve neglected a text or even if they’re just looking over a balcony, my mind has a tendency to run to the worst case scenario, a reflex only exacerbated by my experience of many real deaths. It can be both a relief and a struggle to love someone who doesn’t share this same proclivity for anxiety. Picture Window explores that dynamic.”
The video cuts between scenes that are soaked in cold blue hues and others that are hyper-realistic, where the couple runs through city streets and frolic through parks. Zauner was drawn to Omega’s energy and charm when casting him in the role, but it was Kim’s “melancholy and uncertainty,” she says, that made them a perfect match.
“Watching it back, it’s bittersweet to look back on my year abroad—the wonderful people I met, the neighborhoods I loved and lived in,” Zauner said. “The constant tracking from left to right is a reminder of how time continues to pass no matter how forcefully you struggle to beat it back or rush to get ahead of it. I watch out the window as the scenery passes, visualizing all my unlived lives swishing past.”
“Picture Window” appears on the recently-released Japanese Breakfast album For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), their first since 2021’s Jubilee.
Source link
