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Beyond Here Lies Nothin’: Dylan on IFC

Nothing lights up a Twitter feed like an announcement from a wicked filmmaker that his latest project, a music video, is available for online viewing–and that it’s for the new Bob Dylan single, no less. Bob Dylan + Nash Edgerton in one compressed, provocative, three-minute universe of awesomeness? Stoked, I settled in to watch the video for “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’”  (which, if you haven’t already, you should definitely check out on IFC’s site or below, if you’re a director’s cut kind of person).

Anyone who knows me–indeed, anyone who has been confined in a room with me and an internet connection for more than nine minutes at a time–knows I love to pimp the Edgerton shorts. (The videos, too–Ben Lee’s “Something Borrowed, Something Blue” is in my top ten. I haven’t seen the feature debut, The Square, yet, but I’ve got high hopes that it will get distribution in North America.) Edgerton, whose film career started in stunt work, uses action at varying levels of intensity to tell complex stories in a simple way. A wry edge–sometimes expressed as humour, sometimes as despair–runs through much of what he does. And you can almost always count on a rug-yanking twist, which usually hinges on some sort of strange relationship.

Once you realize how good this guy is at twists, though, you start to wait for them. And I suppose it was only a matter of time before he used one I didn’t like. It’s a tough moment, the first time an artist comes up with something you’re not entirely keen on. It begs the question: is it me? Or is it the twist?

This video has everything going for it. Dylan’s tune, ostensibly a love song, is crazily, grouchily good. The protestations of love are stark and hollow, especially in Dylan’s thickset delivery. It’s a fluorescent-lights-in-the-skid-bar-parking-lot kind of love song, which comes off more ominous than anything else. If it’s true that beyond here lies nothin’, that might be cause for alarm.

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In the video’s opening shot, Edgerton drops us into exactly the sort of place beyond which one would want to get. The street is a wash of dirty, colourless walls. Some dirty, colourless guy makes his way into his dirty, colourless apartment, and (understandably) sets about fixing a drink for himself. Then he hears something, so he grabs a knife and cautiously checks on his, uh, captive. (What?) But she has freed herself from her restraints and is behind the door, at the ready with a bottle to smash over his head. The action that follows is vintage Edgerton–I’m particularly keen on the TV bit. Once it starts, you can’t take your eyes off it. (The intensity of the pacing is especially evident in the director’s cut, when the abrupt stop and start of the musical track highlights the shifts of power.)

The girl eventually wins the fight and bolts from the apartment, still wearing a dirty, colourless gag around her neck. (Or is it a scarf?) The staggering and bleeding fellow pursues, but she is too quick for him and escapes in the car. Rather, she starts to escape, but then decides to back into him at full speed, instead.

Fantastic, right?

Then comes the final twist: the girl hops out of the car and goes in for a smooch.

Up until then, I’d been loving the gender issues at play. The dude uses ropes and dead bolts and hypodermic needles to control his victim, while she uses domestic things like bottles and frying pans and kitchen knives to, effectively, clean his clock. But I guess it’s just visceral–I get a bit tense when screen relationships suggest that chicks, deep down, just love to have the shit kicked out of them, even if that isn’t what they’re saying at all.

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Still, despite my instinctive recoil, I had to dig the ambiguity. Could these people seriously be a couple? Is this what people have to do to feel these days? Or worse, do we actually have to defeat something, utterly, before we can love it? And, if that’s the case, could our need for conquest be so strong that we can’t admit it to ourselves, and hate being shown it on film?

I don’t know, and in the end, I’m not entirely sure I care. I’ve watched the video enough to know that it gets a whole lot right, and I admire it, even if I still don’t actually like where it winds up.

See more Nash Edgerton on the Blue Tongue Films YouTube channel!


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