Patrick Daughters gets dark with Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus
Director and king of the music video treatment, Patrick Daughters, has always had what you could describe as a cute style. Born out of an era when Wes Anderson and Michel Gondry were king, his music videos became known for their in-camera special effects, single continuous shots, playfulness, and a sort of sublime beauty — oftentimes bathed in slow motion.
After an unexpectedly popular video for Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Maps in 2003, a critically acclaimed suite of videos for Feist (including 1,2,3,4 and I Feel It All), and his quick dissemination as the director of choice for indie bands who could afford to pull off his ideas (Death Cab For Cutie, The Shins, Interpol, Grizzly Bear), you would be forgiven for thinking you could pick out a Patrick Daughters video from a lineup.
However, it seems that the moody reverence most of us born before 1980 hold for Depeche Mode was able to turn even a life is beautiful type like Mr. Daughters towards the dark side.
His two videos for the band, the first accompanying the tune Wrong (2009) and a new one for Personal Jesus [Stargate Remix], have no sense of salvation baked in. Gone are the children, bright colors, and paper cutouts of his previous videos, and in their place we are shown a sort of decontextualized paranoia and an almost poetic sense of vengeance. Though both videos have Daughters-isms — Wrong‘s distinct stylistic realism and metaphorical backwards-moving car, Personal Jesus‘ slow-mo glittery explosion of water — both of these videos seem part of a new body of work. It seems like Mr. Daughters is pushing outside of his and his audiences’ comfort zone. It’s an interesting direction, and I’m curious where Patrick will go with this new found thematic freedom. I look forward to his next batch of music videos, and I’m very curious to hear more about his rumored upcoming feature film debut.
