Browse: Home / Mike Mills Miscellany: Beth Orton, “Concrete Sky”

Menu

Skip to content
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
  • Login

The-SoluteLogo

A Film Site By Lovers of Film

Menu

Skip to content
  • Features
  • Reviews
  • Long Reviews
  • News
  • Articles and Opinions
  • Other Media
  • Film on the Internet: SEA OF LOVE
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray
  • Welcome to THE O.C., Friends! By Cliffy
  • Movie Gifts Holidays 2023 - The List
  • Nothing Is Real And Nothing To Get Hung About - John From Cincinnati

Mike Mills Miscellany: Beth Orton, “Concrete Sky”

Posted By Greta Taylor on May 11, 2020 in Features | Leave a response

Starting three years ago, I set out to cover the complete filmic works of Mike Mills. I mostly succeeded but left some gaps, mostly with his commercials and music videos. Now, with nothing else for me to do, I will fill in as many of those gaps as I can/want to.

https://www.the-solute.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Beth-Orton-Concrete-Sky.mp4

The story of Mike Mills is the story of someone who started clever and gradually dug deeper and revealed meaning in that cleverness. You can tell a former graphic designer was behind some of the artier moments of 20th Century Women and Beginners, but those movies work because their distancing devices get unmasked as Mills’ way to cope with real-world misery. Judging by his one attempt at straightforward emotion, he’s better off sticking with the devices.

For some of Mills’ music videos, the concept becomes more of the star of the show than the actual music. The “concept” of the “Concrete Sky” video is that Beth Orton, and eventually a few unknown men in suits, is wandering around a forest in a red dress. This ties into the song in that “the trees” are referenced in the song’s chorus, but Mills does nothing further with the tree imagery other than Orton walking around them like a parody of a Malick character. It looks pretty (or at least I imagine it does in something other than the ghastly 240p upload that seems to be the only way to watch it), but to seemingly no end other than to provide visual wallpaper for the song. It’s all so aggressively unclever that one wonders if that’s the point, an attempt by Mills to rid himself of his usual affectations and try his hand at something like normalcy. But at this point in his life, normalcy to Mills just looked like a perfume ad, gauze and cliches about the serenity of nature and the ocean. He previously mocked these kind of soft-focus views of the world in his video for Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s “2 Kindsa Love”, so it’s tempting to read this as a deep-undercover parody, but much more likely it’s just a botched try at sincerity. There’s no ironic distance, but there’s also no feeling in irony’s place.

This came at the tail end of Mills’ music video career, when he seemed more interested in deconstructions of music videos than in delivering straightforward ones (the video after this one, Martin Gore’s “Stardust”, is a taunt to anybody who goes to music videos for rock stars in hotel rooms and hot women). In this light, one can see this as a visualization of Mills having run out of ideas that would produce any kind of conventional enjoyment, a process he would repeat to even more embarrassing results with Thumbsucker a few years later. Thank god he figured himself out soon enough.

Posted in Features | Tagged Mike Mills

About the Author

Greta Taylor

Greta Taylor (she/her) writes about movies, often ones directed by a famous bald man. She’s smart, funny, and loved by all, even her enemies.

Related Posts

Year of the Month: BUTTER 08→

Four Years Later: The Cast and Crew of 20TH CENTURY WOMEN→

The (Additional) Advertising Work of Mike Mills→

Three Years Later: The Cast and Crew of 20TH CENTURY WOMEN→

  • Comments
  • Popular
  • Most Recent
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleWonderful piece, Sam. It's made…
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleFellow heretic here. I've never…
  • n***********@gmail.com'
    Ruck Cohlchez on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEI wouldn't have called it…
  • j***********@gmail.com'
    Son of Griff on LIFE ITSELFGlad to hear back from…
  • n*********@gmail.com'
    Jake Gittes on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEThis is the single most…
  • “The End” of SAVAGES

    35831 views / Posted November 10, 2014
  • What the fuck did I just watch? SPHERE

    28353 views / Posted March 19, 2015
  • The Untalented Mr. Ripley: The Craft of Standup Comedy and the Non-Comedy of TOM MYERS

    27352 views / Posted June 26, 2018
  • Gordon with Mr. Looper

    Attention Must Be Paid: Will Lee

    26750 views / Posted January 7, 2023
  • Scenic Routes: SHOWGIRLS (1995)

    20897 views / Posted November 20, 2014
  • Film on the Internet: SEA OF LOVE

    December 6, 2023 / ZoeZ
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray

    December 5, 2023 / Greta Taylor
  • Welcome to THE O.C., Friends! By Cliffy

    December 5, 2023 / Sam "Burgundy Suit" Scott
  • Movie Gifts Holidays 2023 – The List

    December 4, 2023 / The Ploughman
  • Nothing Is Real And Nothing To Get Hung About – John From Cincinnati

    December 4, 2023 / Tristan "Drunk Napoleon" Nankervis

Last Tweets

    ©2014 - 2016 The-Solute | Hosted, Developed and Maintained by Bellingham WP LogoBellinghamWP.com.

    Menu

    • Home
    • Who We Are
    • About
    • Privacy
    • Contact Us
    • Login
    Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!