Music Video Review

Music video review

‘Stress’ - Justice




‘Stress’ by award winning French electronic/indie band Justice is one of the best songs on their ‘†’ album which since being released has been nominated for ‘best electronic/dance album’ Grammy award. Not only is the song a winner but the 7 minute music video directed by Romain Gavras is also a work of art. It shows a gang of 8 parading around French streets in matching † hoodies, roughing up the locals, smashing up pubs and cars etc. Romain Gavras attempts to portray current French society in this video as there have been many riots amongst young people just like in this video. Therefore the video is additionally clever and interesting to watch as it's not only entertaining but its interesting and controversial as it provides connotations of the society in modern France.
Though we’ve been presented with gangs in music videos before, this one is particularly interesting, no just because of the social outlines but also the technical apects. The jolts and shakes of the intense camera movement and the sudden cuts of the editing make you inclined to watch it, if not a little dizzy at times. We as the audience are also put in the front row seat as the director puts us behind the camera. For half of the video on and off the camera is at our point of view as we see all the action happening and eventually in the end, we get beaten to a pulp by the rest of the gang. Continuity is played with a lot as well in the video as there are a couple of sequences of shots of the gang walking where it cuts to another shot of them standing or jumping around, it makes you disorientated, or ‘stresses’ the mind which is perhaps the directors idea.
Energetic and sleek, it’s not only the technicalities of the video that make it so powerful. At times the content makes you feel a bit uncomfortable and scared in case you walk out of your house and see these hells angels on your street, and you feel yourself shaking your head, sighing and thinking ‘kids today’. Though at the end of the video when they’re eventually caught up by a team of police and they run away you feel yourself hoping they escape.
Creativity is also abundant in this video. For example, when you (the character behind the camera) get in the getaway car with the rest of the gang after being caught you see the sound man getting in as well, which is humorous as well as inventive seeing as there’s no sound in the whole video apart from the song playing over it. Additionally another humorous part is the radio in the car playing D.A.N.C.E which is another big hit by justice on the † album and one of the gang members kicks the radio in disgust and throws it out of the window.
Cleverly mapped out and filmed, this piece of controversial art is a new age of music videos. Forget generic videos of women dancing from behind and a band simply playing guitars to a camera, this video sparks the creative mind. A great video to a great song.