Music video acting is interesting. It’s like, yeah, it’s acting, but it exists in this weird in-between space. The storytelling strokes in a music video can be overly broad, while at the same time, the identity-less characters that actors play can be drawn rather blankly. You’re not necessarily looking for who the character is, you’re looking for how the video makes you feel.
Like a number of music videos that tell stories, the tale in “We’re on Our Way Now” isn’t necessarily the same one told by the lyrics, although they both stir up a similar response. The song is a moody rock venture—when I realized that Noel Gallagher used to be in Oasis, I wasn’t surprised. It’s about a lost opportunity: seemingly a lost love, a lost chance that may have been snatched away by death. Right from the start, it’s wistful, entreating, “Remember what might have been.” The pre-chorus features the mournful lines, “Good luck in the afterlife. / I hear the morning sun doesn’t cast no shadow,” and the chorus, while melodically brighter, is still hung with glints of regret.
The video also asks us to consider what might have been, or perhaps what once was. We follow a man and a woman in two different scenarios—personally, I get the feeling that we’re looking at the past (the happier passages) and the present (the sadder ones,) but the former might also be a “road less traveled” kind of thing. In the happier passages, the two are clearly a couple, in love in easy, uncomplicated ways like walking through the park or driving through the city. In the sadder passages, we don’t know exactly what’s happened, but it seems they don’t have each other: the man is leading a lonely reckless life, while the woman stares into the camera with tears in her eyes.
Given that there are basically two “characters” in the video, it’s no surprise that Matt Smith plays the man. I’ll admit that his performance pulls me in more in the sadder passages. Whether he’s nervously looking out the window or lying listlessly on the bed of his small upstairs flat with a bag full of money (like I said, a lonely reckless life,) I feel like I’m being invited into his situation, whatever it might be. I want to know more, and I want to know what have happened between him and the woman (played by Gala Gordon.)
But while the happier passages are more boilerplate, they’re valuable for their contrast to the other scenes. These shots of a couple contentedly in love—are they the life the man used to have, and if so, what went wrong? Are they the life the man might’ve had if he’d not gone down a different path?
Accent Watch
Not applicable—he doesn’t speak onscreen.
Recommend?
In General – I think so. I wasn’t familiar with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, but I liked the song and the video is interesting.
Matt Smith – Why not? It’s not a super demanding role, but it’s four minutes out of your day, so if you like Smith, you’ll probably enjoy it.
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