Director: Andrei Zaitcev
Cast: Miguel Ángel León Brázquez, Alba Cabrera Bancells, Iris Fernández Escudero
Running time: 4mins
On first appearance, grizzled lead-actor Miguel Ángel León Brázquez is perfectly cast for a vaguely ominous music video. He is a master of casting a thousand-mile stare into the far-horizon, looking as though something grim is weighing heavily on his mind even amid the revelry of a pop song. But just as director Andrei Zaitcev risks developing some kind of an atmosphere in his short film for Marcus Marques’ song of the same name, he plonks a set of binoculars in Brázquez’s hands and says “Now, look confused.”
Not just moderately confused, either. On the evidence of what we see in They Are Among Us, Brázquez was asked to deliver the kind of bemused double-take more at home in a BBC sitcom about warring neighbours, than what is intended as a psycho-sexual-thriller…
This is an accurate reflection of the tone throughout Zaitcev’s music video. It toys with eery concepts and dark themes – but at its core, it’s inescapably silly. Another example of this is Brázquez’s reaction to finding that a bird caged in his ramshackle cabin is – as a famously euphemistic pet shop owner might say – pining for the fjords. In the following burial scene, which initially feels like a sad and tense moment of loss and regret, Brázquez ultimately tosses the lifeless body into a comically massive hole, before gleefully flinging dirt on top of it. The bird’s corpse resurfaces later, and is thrown about to other comedic ends; its stiff little body bouncing off hard surfaces, being unceremoniously dumped in the fire, chucked in the river on a tiny boat, or appearing beneath a silver cloche.
Returning to what our main character initially witnessed with horror, through those binoculars, meanwhile, it emerges that two women (Alba Cabrera Bancells and Iris Fernández Escudero) are approaching across the barren wilderness. His apparent panic again seems to border on sitcom-shock: in particular, this feels like one of those episodes where a main character invites someone they need to impress over to dinner, before realising he has nothing to serve. And adding to this feeling, Brázquez ends up serving his esteemed guests two plates of gravel, followed by a main course of poached Polly.
Somehow, the guests don’t seem to notice, or care what is being served. In fact, it seems the banquet has awoken other appetites in them, leading to an erotically-charged weekend between the three of them. Throughout the encounters, we are shown glimpses of each of the actors making out with each of the others; bathing in the mountains; being buried in stones; skipping across a distant plain without clothes; and screaming at each other in terror or rage, for no discernible reason. And at several points, the two women stand gazing longingly at the camera, shrouded by mist – but also flanked by a random cow, who chews the cud unconcerned with the apparently undeniable chemistry of the scene. Admittedly the cinematography is gorgeous, making the most of the stunning landscape and some wonderful lighting contrasts to hint at a different, foreboding atmosphere that might have been more in keeping with the music’s warning that they are among us. But largely, the rest of the film does not come close to matching that.
Of course, it would be fair to say that this all sounds very silly because I am trying to find narrative cohesion in something which could be read as abstract art. But such a reading of the film would be inherently less interesting than leaning into the absurdities present. After all, what great, philosophical points are we otherwise being invited to consider here? That baggage from previous traumas might stand in the way of future happiness? That conventionally attractive people might like to have sex? That being conventionally attractive is no guarantee of a lasting romance?
Truly, groundbreaking stuff.
Whether I enjoyed the film less as an experimental short – or more as a bit of silly fun that took itself too seriously to comic effect – is beside the point, though. This is a music video for Marcus Marques’ They Are Among Us, so it matters most whether it fits with that or not. On the one hand, I would say it is a poor fit, in the sense that the suggestion some amorphous they are among us sounds like a vague and ominous warning – and this video never manages to deliver a sufficient feeling of threat to back that up. But at the same time, Marques’ lyrics also feel pointedly underwhelming (I try to find a way; I’m workin’ on this every day), while his strange vocal style – segueing into a bizarre, honking falsetto in the chorus without warning – is bordering on hilarious. As a tonally chaotic and thematically trivial film which takes itself too seriously, perhaps this video really is the perfect accompaniment to a song that makes the very same mistakes.