Student Life Archives

Stratocoaster will be Cadenza’s “sexy and aggressive” music blog, according to our Music Editor, Steve Hardy. Tune in every Tuesday for music musings from Hardy and his garrulous crew of writers.

Generally, music videos aren’t supposed to last 35 minutes. But Kanye West’s music video for the song “Runaway” is more short film epic than music video. It follows the love story between a phoenix that fell to Earth and West himself. Alas, humanity does not understand the phoenix or West’s love for her, and she flies away. Parallels to West’s career are clear. Short dialogue breaks are taken between samples of West’s new album, and it even has a full credit sequence.

The moments “Runaway” works best are when it stays truest to form as a music video. The 8-minute long section centered around the title song features ballerinas, a table full of aristocrats, and Kanye standing on a piano. West took a huge risk with the entire film, but especially this section, and it more than pays off. (Sidebar: is this the year ballet makes a comeback? Between visionary director Darren Aronofsky’s ballet psychothriller “Black Swan” and this short film, it certainly looks like it.)

Selita Ebanks stars as the phoenix and does surprisingly well at capturing the movements of a bird, although her phoenix cries were unintentionally funny. And while the acting is more reminiscent of “Scream Queens” than “Schindler’s List,” and the dialogue seem to have been pulled straight from a telenovela, I still think that West succeeded with “Runaway.” The lensing is easily the best cinematography in a music video of all time (to crib a phrase from the master himself). He directed it himself, and although there are times it feels like a student film, it’s a fine job and easily one of the better directing debuts in music videos. This is his vision through and through, and it shines.

The music is also phenomenal, and “My Dark Twisted Fantasy” could be his best album yet. Rihanna’s guest spot on “All of the Lights” probably will be the best thing she’ll be involved with all year. West’s restyling of Bon Iver’s “Woods” for his song “Lost in the Woods” is incredible, as is his sampling of spoken-word artist Gil Scott-Heron. The only disappointment musically is that he didn’t include the song “Monster,” something I expected after hearing Nicki Minaj as the Cockney-accented narrator.

Is the 35-minute run time necessary? Not in my opinion. It could have been shorter, and some of the scenes of dialogues are definitely unnecessary. Should you still watch it despite the run time? Yes. The music and visuals more than make up for it. It’s sort of like Avatar, except without being spoon-fed metaphors and having to wear annoying 3-D glasses to truly appreciate the scenery. West’s album drops on November 22, 2010, and it’s sure to be one of the biggest events in music this year.