Folk Rock Music Video Analysis

The video starts with the lead singer of the band asleep/passed out on a bed, with an awake women sat next to him. There are a variety of quick shots at different angles of the woman stroking his face. The woman looks out of the window, and a man dressed similarly to a typical 'ninja' enters from the window, and grabs the lead singer, putting a bag/sack over his head, and dragging him back out. We see the dragging happen several times in several different angles. It then goes onto a long-shot of a car on a suburban horizon, with very quick shots of the man walking him to the car and they use quick close-up shots of different parts of their bodies. They go on with this until the man throws him into the car and the shot lingers as he closes the door. After this, the video follows this again with really quick short shots of the car moving, and the objects and lead singer in the car. The shots in the car move about as though the camera is being moved as though it is in the car. The action is very fast paced and moves on quickly, which is aided by the shots. The singer is then tied to a stool in what appears to be some sort of bar, and the action slows a little bit, but not by a huge amount, and he breaks out. The action  then speeds up again as the singer escapes and runs off, with the camera moving about in a surreal as he does so. The camera then jerks as he is jumped out at by another man, and goes through several flashbacks of things which have already happened in the video, before much slower and lingering shots of him being carried away again. There are a few long shots of the environment, before a close up of the lead singer in a crate, and a long shot of the crate having a lid put on it. There are quick but slow moving shots of the singer with a match, while the woman from the beginning circles around it.   The shots slow down as the crate is lifted up on a forklift and as it moves the camera's begin to move and shake with it. The crate is loaded, before being crushed, and the shots are slow and suspenseful. The singer wakes up on the bed he started with, and the shot is long and basic, before fading out to black. Interestingly, the entire video is narrative, and there is no performance element at all.

The video is made up of a strange combination of narrative and performance, with them put together. It alternates between Dylan singing in a dark room with a cigar, and him singing in a car. It has no real narrative, and focuses on the singer for the whole thing, which is typical for folk rock.




The entire video is made up of performance, and Buckley is the entire focus. There is also a purple tone to the whole video, and this effect makes it look older.