I take it you are not familiar with La Boheme? It's the one wherein Mimi, the delicate young lover who is too sweet and innocent to live, dies of consumption at the closing curtain, giving pathetic little coughs all throughout a diseased-lungs-could-never-produce-THAT aria of gorgeousness. (It's the opera that Cher cries over in Moonstruck!) Boheme is simultaneously heartbreakingly romantic and utterly ridiculous.
The music the vidder chose is (iirc) the first private conversation between the young lovers. The candle has blown out, she has dropped her room key, and the two of them are groping around in the dark for it. He bumps up against her "poor, frozen" hand, clutches it to himself, promptly abandons all pretense of being helpful, and macks on her with this ridiculous song that's all, "You don't know me, but I'm awesome."
(He's not awesome. I've never been entirely clear on whether we're supposed to suspend disbelief about his not-awesomeness.)
So THAT'S the joke: the vidder has cast John and Cameron as Rodolfo and Mimi, of all people. It ought to be COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY WRONG (Cameron's hands are cold not because she is frail and delicate and dying of consumption! they are cold because she is an unstoppable killer robot!) but yet it works, somehow. (John and his Eyeliner of Emo Earnestness is surprisingly effective as Rodolfo!) And to make it worse (better?) the vidder is unabashedly pushing the wrongness of it at every opportunity -- the eyes! the hope! the way John keeps carrying that laptop around like a hipster at a coffeeshop! -- and yet... it never stops working in this TERRIBLY WRONG sort of way.
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I take it you are not familiar with La Boheme? It's the one wherein Mimi, the delicate young lover who is too sweet and innocent to live, dies of consumption at the closing curtain, giving pathetic little coughs all throughout a diseased-lungs-could-never-produce-THAT aria of gorgeousness. (It's the opera that Cher cries over in Moonstruck!) Boheme is simultaneously heartbreakingly romantic and utterly ridiculous.
The music the vidder chose is (iirc) the first private conversation between the young lovers. The candle has blown out, she has dropped her room key, and the two of them are groping around in the dark for it. He bumps up against her "poor, frozen" hand, clutches it to himself, promptly abandons all pretense of being helpful, and macks on her with this ridiculous song that's all, "You don't know me, but I'm awesome."
(He's not awesome. I've never been entirely clear on whether we're supposed to suspend disbelief about his not-awesomeness.)
So THAT'S the joke: the vidder has cast John and Cameron as Rodolfo and Mimi, of all people. It ought to be COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY WRONG (Cameron's hands are cold not because she is frail and delicate and dying of consumption! they are cold because she is an unstoppable killer robot!) but yet it works, somehow. (John and his Eyeliner of Emo Earnestness is surprisingly effective as Rodolfo!) And to make it worse (better?) the vidder is unabashedly pushing the wrongness of it at every opportunity -- the eyes! the hope! the way John keeps carrying that laptop around like a hipster at a coffeeshop! -- and yet... it never stops working in this TERRIBLY WRONG sort of way.