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Embedded content is unavailable. Pitchfork: Was the concept for 'Cut the World' collaborative? NE: It stemmed from Antony. I remember getting an email with an outline that was really well-written, which is something I'm not used to. AH: It's something I've been working on for a couple of years, developing an idea for a film. I've got notebooks full of ideas. I knew I wanted to record a video for 'Cut the World' and do something we hadn't done before. It seemed synchronistic. Most videos I've done have been a bit fringier. Nabil, were the Bon Iver concepts your original ideas? NE: Everything I'd done prior was an original idea. AH: This video was a bit more aggressively narrated.
On August 7, Antony and the Johnsons will return with Cut the World via Secretly Canadian. 
In other words, you only have to wait one day to hear the whole thing. Still, to whet your appetite, the. And while this isn't the first time that Antony has worked with an orchestra, most of the songs appear here in dazzling new arrangements. It also works as a summation of his recurring themes of escape from this ravaged world, this mortal body, to achieve a higher, purer level of feminine being.
But I loved it. As a director, what I'd love to do is a feature. So I was happy to make that shift-- getting a piece of a story. It was a big step in the direction I want to move and how I want to create things. Even the texture. I have this video as a benchmark-- the feeling and tone that I want to create. Pitchfork: The video leaves a lot open for interpretation.
Antony, how did you conceptualize the narrative? AH: The basic premise was that a cataclysm in nature provokes a chain of events, which occur in the film. I ended up finding the word 'cataclysm' because I kept thinking of a tsunami, or something that happened to everyone-- no one was making conscious decisions. And Willem sensed that something was changing, in the way that a dog would sense an earthquake. And by the time [Carice] was aware of what happened, somehow her consciousness had shifted. One of the struggles was-- NE: To find balance. AH: --so it didn't seem like it was a revenge killing, or that she was upset with him for a personal reason.
We really worked on the innocence of Willem's character. NE: On really humanizing him. When you look at him, you're not thinking, 'This is a bad boss.' Pitchfork: What did you do, in terms of the cinematography, to emphasize that?
NE: The tone of the film was very subtly approached-- keeping on shots with slow movements. Really letting you feel him through his subtle actions, as simple as drinking the coffee or looking out the window. Leaving that open to interpretation; not being too specific. AH: [ to Nabil] You really got into their eyes. It really drew you into both of them.
Drivers para sony vaio vgn-c140f. NE: Both of their eyes are so unbelievable. The way Carice's eyelids would flicker, the little movements of her eyeball-- you can sense her character and what she was feeling. Same with Willem. Eyes are the windows to the soul; that's not just a saying. 'If you're only making art about your own pedestrian life, abstracted from the reality of the world today, soon you'll have a creative cesspool of meaningless work. Because it's not built on any values.'
Pitchfork: The video seems to be about dismantling the male role, and the idea of different perspectives and ways of seeing the world. AH: It's been provocative for me to see people try to create a moral narrative out of it. We didn't come at it from that perspective. NE: It reveals what's in the viewer's head. AH: It's been weird to see people with opposing points of view-- who have found something in it that might resonate with them, or that they hate about it.
It's actually a bit disturbing to create work like that. It reminds me of like, Borat, where everyone's laughing, but everyone's laughing for a different reason. One person's laughing because they're racist, and the other person's laughing because racists are so idiotic. There's a moral ambiguity. NE: What I was hoping we would create-- and I think we did-- was something with beauty, even in that [murder] scene.
And the transfer. AH: That was the most important moment-- when she cuts his throat-- the idea that she stays emotionally open while it's happening, and cries, and makes that transfer of a tear into his eye. It was actually quite amazing for that filming to happen. She really was crying into his eyes. Willem was freaking out because he'd never had someone's tears fall onto his eyeballs before. He said it was a really intense, hyper-intimate experience. It was a really central scene.
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Embedded content is unavailable. Pitchfork: Was the concept for 'Cut the World' collaborative? NE: It stemmed from Antony. I remember getting an email with an outline that was really well-written, which is something I'm not used to. AH: It's something I've been working on for a couple of years, developing an idea for a film. I've got notebooks full of ideas. I knew I wanted to record a video for 'Cut the World' and do something we hadn't done before. It seemed synchronistic. Most videos I've done have been a bit fringier. Nabil, were the Bon Iver concepts your original ideas? NE: Everything I'd done prior was an original idea. AH: This video was a bit more aggressively narrated.
On August 7, Antony and the Johnsons will return with Cut the World via Secretly Canadian. In other words, you only have to wait one day to hear the whole thing. Still, to whet your appetite, the. And while this isn't the first time that Antony has worked with an orchestra, most of the songs appear here in dazzling new arrangements. It also works as a summation of his recurring themes of escape from this ravaged world, this mortal body, to achieve a higher, purer level of feminine being.
But I loved it. As a director, what I'd love to do is a feature. So I was happy to make that shift-- getting a piece of a story. It was a big step in the direction I want to move and how I want to create things. Even the texture. I have this video as a benchmark-- the feeling and tone that I want to create. Pitchfork: The video leaves a lot open for interpretation.
Antony, how did you conceptualize the narrative? AH: The basic premise was that a cataclysm in nature provokes a chain of events, which occur in the film. I ended up finding the word 'cataclysm' because I kept thinking of a tsunami, or something that happened to everyone-- no one was making conscious decisions. And Willem sensed that something was changing, in the way that a dog would sense an earthquake. And by the time [Carice] was aware of what happened, somehow her consciousness had shifted. One of the struggles was-- NE: To find balance. AH: --so it didn't seem like it was a revenge killing, or that she was upset with him for a personal reason.
We really worked on the innocence of Willem's character. NE: On really humanizing him. When you look at him, you're not thinking, 'This is a bad boss.' Pitchfork: What did you do, in terms of the cinematography, to emphasize that?
NE: The tone of the film was very subtly approached-- keeping on shots with slow movements. Really letting you feel him through his subtle actions, as simple as drinking the coffee or looking out the window. Leaving that open to interpretation; not being too specific. AH: [ to Nabil] You really got into their eyes. It really drew you into both of them.
Drivers para sony vaio vgn-c140f. NE: Both of their eyes are so unbelievable. The way Carice's eyelids would flicker, the little movements of her eyeball-- you can sense her character and what she was feeling. Same with Willem. Eyes are the windows to the soul; that's not just a saying. 'If you're only making art about your own pedestrian life, abstracted from the reality of the world today, soon you'll have a creative cesspool of meaningless work. Because it's not built on any values.'
Pitchfork: The video seems to be about dismantling the male role, and the idea of different perspectives and ways of seeing the world. AH: It's been provocative for me to see people try to create a moral narrative out of it. We didn't come at it from that perspective. NE: It reveals what's in the viewer's head. AH: It's been weird to see people with opposing points of view-- who have found something in it that might resonate with them, or that they hate about it.
It's actually a bit disturbing to create work like that. It reminds me of like, Borat, where everyone's laughing, but everyone's laughing for a different reason. One person's laughing because they're racist, and the other person's laughing because racists are so idiotic. There's a moral ambiguity. NE: What I was hoping we would create-- and I think we did-- was something with beauty, even in that [murder] scene.
And the transfer. AH: That was the most important moment-- when she cuts his throat-- the idea that she stays emotionally open while it's happening, and cries, and makes that transfer of a tear into his eye. It was actually quite amazing for that filming to happen. She really was crying into his eyes. Willem was freaking out because he'd never had someone's tears fall onto his eyeballs before. He said it was a really intense, hyper-intimate experience. It was a really central scene.