Davis Silis - 7th Aug 2014

You can never be sure how likely or often a great music video director is to return once they’ve begun flexing their cinematic muscles in longer formats. Jonze makes the occasional appearance. Gondry rocks back up once in a while with something as witty as always. Wolfe?

Goddamn.

With his first video in two years, this time for Paolo Nutini’s Iron Sky, and just after finishing his already-acclaimed debut feature Catch Me Daddy, Wolfe doesn’t just return to music videos, he punches straight to the gut. 

Like what.

Nutini’s voice howls above eight minutes of unnerving, haunting images. Each shot filled with its own form of agony. A distant dystopia that feels uncomfortably familiar. Pervasive desperation. Visceral brutality. Looking for salvation through religion and chemicals in equal measure.

Wolfe manages to create a video that is as distressing as it is beautiful. Insightful. Alarming. While others take what they’ve learned in music videos to features, he’s brought it all back; an earnest cinematic poetry that’s increasingly rare in our industry.

Six minutes in, the crawling tilt down a 20th century fresco while an extract of Chaplin's The Great Dictator is heard betrays the level at which Wolfe is now creating; a shot that will no doubt be referenced on the silver screen, let alone other videos.

Like any great work of film, there’s so much to unpack. And at its core, a truth about us we’d rather not acknowledge.

Goddamn. Tremendous work.