Y tu Luna también: Katy Perry – “The One that Got Away” (2011)

I’d have liked to jump into another one of Diego Luna’s TV projects, because he’s seriously done so much good TV work, but I also want to make sure I’m not in the middle of a show when season 2 of Andor hits—April 22^nd, woooo! So I’ll be throwing in more film and miscellaneous stuff in the interim, along with one of his shorter TV offerings.

Seeing actors I like in old music videos is always an interesting experience. It may or may not involve actual acting (beyond, generally, kissing and/or other sensual stuff,) and there may or may not be any discernible plot. In Diego Luna’s case, this Katy Perry video tells a surprisingly complete story.

The title is self-explanatory for the song. It’s about looking back and regretting the loss of an old love. The verses are catchy and filled with story lyrics, reminiscences about a first real adult relationship and wistful lines like, “Talk about our future like we had a clue. / Never planned that one day, I'd be losing you.” The chorus comes in hard and really hits: “In another life, / I would be your girl. / We keep all our promises, / Be us against the world. / In another life, / I would make you stay, / So I don't have to say / You were the one that got away.”

The video is more plot-oriented than many, bookended by scenes that aren’t set to the music. This framing device features Perry in slightly uncanny old-age makeup, which takes the “look back in regret” theme about as far as it can go. Meanwhile, the “meat” of the video, the actual song, shifts back and forth between the older Perry and flashbacks of her youthful relationship with the eponymous one that got away. While the video hits all the main beats of the relationship, both good and bad—this is, after all, a song about a lost love—it reaches a point where its story diverges from the story in the song, which is kind of odd. As a video, it works beautifully, but as a companion to the song, it begs the question, “Did you listen to the whole thing?” A bit like the instances on Glee where it’s clear they didn’t go beyond the title and/or the chorus in terms of matching a song to the theme of the episode.

Diego Luna plays the lost love that the song revolves around. In the flashbacks, he and Perry are wrapped up in their art and their relationship almost equally. They’re a bit bohemian, a bit rock ‘n’ roll, and they fill their ramshackle love nest with passion and beauty. It gets trite in places, but the video makes it work. We see why they love each other, the way they’re both attracted to what’s different and creative and exciting. But we also see why they fall apart, how their passion for their art is tied to a volatility that makes them prone to dramatic actions in their anger. It’s an “epic” relationship of the Veronica Mars/Logan Echolls variety, very “lives ruined [and] bloodshed.”

This setup gives Luna a broad canvas to work with in the span of four minutes. As the lover, he’s intensely focused as he creates and brimming with light and love as he shows his work to Perry, his muse. In a photography session, they both play with gender, and he leans into the feminine quality of his beauty as he peeks out coyly behind a fur-trimmed coat. When he’s in the creative zone and his impatience rises, his temper flares—both he and Perry do (and presumably say) things they’ll come to regret.

A while back, James Corden brought up the video when Luna was a guest on his show, and Luna predicted that his death would someday be announced as, “The guy from the video of Katy Perry just died.” Even though the video winds up telling a somewhat different story than the song, I understand why it has such enduring popularity with Perry’s fans. It’s romantic and emotionally charged, and Luna creates what really does feel like a character in his interactions with Perry in a pretty short time.

Recommend?

In General – If you’re at all into pop music, I would. It’s an enjoyable song with a memorable video.

Diego Luna – Why not? It’s less than five minutes out of your day, and Luna is effective in it.

Warnings

Drinking, sensuality, and thematic elements.

Other Doctor Lives: Lewis Capaldi – “Someone You Loved” (2019)

*Note: Since there are two different Capaldis in this project, I’ll mostly refer to them by their first names.*

It took me a bit of trial and error to find Peter Capaldi in this music video, because it turns out the song has two of them! I watched the official video first, which has so many people in it that I wondered if Peter was just a cameo in the crowd. (Singer Lewis Capaldi is an extended relation, so it would’ve been plausible to Peter to pop up briefly as an Easter egg.) But there’s a second music video, one in which Peter is the star.

It's a music video that tells a story, a decently complex one for the medium. In it, we quietly follow a man through his day, drifting in the recent memories of his days spent by a hospital bed. We see how his life intertwines with that of a young mother, how much they mean to each other in a way that few can relate to. (I’m avoiding getting too deep into spoilers, since watching this mini-story unfold in the video is genuinely lovely.)

As with a lot of story-driven music videos, the narrative it’s telling isn’t exactly the one told by the song, but it resonates on a similar level. Lewis’s voice is raw and plaintive as he sings about the loss of a loved one from his life. Some of my favorite lyrics from the song are as follows:

·        “It’s easy to say, / But it’s never the same. / I guess I kinda liked the way you numbed all the pain.”

·        “Now the day bleeds / Into nightfall, / And you’re not here / To get me through it all / I let my guard down, / And then you pulled the rug. / I was getting kinda used to being someone you loved.”

·        “I’m going under and this time I fear there’s no one to turn to. / This all or nothing way of loving got me sleeping without you.”

Extended relation or not, Peter Capaldi was a great choice to play the central man in the video (he’s the only character with a name, David Simon.) He brings such a light touch to the role, conveying sadness, loneliness, and love in a really understated way. His scenes show how wearying these emotions can be, how they weigh on you.

But at the same time, it’s ultimately a hopeful video. Wistful flashbacks are tinged with warmth and Peter’s lovely smile. We see unlikely connections that mean the world to the characters involved, new connections formed in the wake of the loss. The whole thing is wonderfully done, and the video gives the mournful song this sense of the sun waiting to peek from behind the clouds.

Accent Watch

Not applicable, there’s no dialogue.

Recommend?

In General – I would. I like the song anyway, and this video casts an interesting slant on it.

Peter Capaldi – Yes. Music videos tend to paint their stories in pretty broad strokes, but this one is fairly subtle. In less than three minutes of dialogue-free acting, I feel like I understand who David is, and that’s quite an accomplishment!

Warnings

Thematic elements.

Summer of Soul (2021, PG-13)

This is a really wonderful documentary. It contains a treasure trove of footage from “Black Woodstock,” the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival that featured many of the greatest Black artists of the day on the same stage. But it won the Oscar for Best Documentary this year, not just for the incredible footage it brings to light, but for how it contextualizes it in both the past and present.

In the 1960s, a man named Tony Lawrence realized a dream of putting on an enormous music festival in Harlem’s Mount Morris Park. Enlisting some of the biggest names in Black music, the 1969 festival covered six consecutive weekends and drew over 300,000 concertgoers. It featured the likes of Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, the 5^th Dimension, Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson, and many, many more.

As director/Oscar winner(!) Questlove discussed with Trevor Noah when he appeared on The Daily Show, the story is vital beyond the priceless footage it shows of so many brilliant artists sharing the stage together, footage that sat untouched for 50 years and was all but forgotten. It’s also vital for the exquisite display of Black joy and community on the screen. Alongside the footage of the musical performances is shot after shot of the throng of festival attendees, everyone from teens and 20-somethings to parents with little kids to older folks in their Sunday best. The people sing and dance together, their eyes glued to the stage. The 1960s are considered a time of strife and struggle in Black history, protesters getting beaten as they march for their rights, bombs going off in Alabama churches, but this is the Black history of 1969 too, a massive crowd of Black folks coming together in celebration of their music and culture.

The documentary arranges itself along loose themes. A number of the gospel singers, for instance, are grouped together, while another section looks at African and Afrolatino performers and another explores words of activism on the stage. Archive footage and news clips from outside the festival are brought it to add context: the uprisings after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. the previous year, the evolving style of Black hair and fashion in the ‘60s, the moon landing (which took place in the middle of the festival.) It covers a lot of different ideas while still revolving around the festival itself. So many interesting, culturally-specific details, like the fact that the Black Panthers volunteered to run security when Lawrence wasn’t sure if the police would cover the festival, or the attendee who, looking back, remembers feeling “powerful” when she saw that Sly Stone’s trumpet player was a Black woman.

It’s beautiful to watch the footage and fascinating to see the documentary shade in the history around it. I also really love the present-day interviews with people who were there, a number of attendees along with some of the performers. What makes these interviews extra-special is the way the participants comment as they themselves are watching the footage, seeing those magical days from 50 years ago live again before their eyes.

Warnings

Language, sensuality, discussion of violence, smoking/drug use, and thematic elements.