We gushed over James Blake’s cover of the Joni Mitchell heartbreaker “A Case of You” early in the year, but now we have the accompany video to the song featuring the very, very intriguing Rebecca Hall of Vicky Cristina Barcelona and last year’s The Town. It opens in bed, at gaze, through sunlight. A moment that feels so safe in what you have that just as soon turns to night, as the warm, kitschy red lights that you grew to love fade into mornings that came and went without enough notice. It flashes through a relationship from its warmest highs to most frigid lows, and all the moments that slipped on by in between. It implies and directs to fill in the blanks; the pre-night out routine, readjustment after a week of joint travel, the diagnosis each other’s work complaints; the steady anecdotes and initial playfulness, and all the other little things that eat at you while the wound is still fresh.
The video highlights certain lyrics like “I’m frightened by the devil, but I’m drawn to those ones that ain’t afraid” to frame a certain depth, and flinches between the anguish in the moments of self-doubt when things are confusingly still to the breaths of sublime intimacy you think make it worthwhile, with rolling image past the simple line “You taste so bitter and so sweet.” It is pretty unique in its ability to paint such a whole picture of a relationship through not just glimpses, but brief glimpses from one half of the story. It’s a video that puts the song in better context, that strikes just the right tone – nostalgic but raw, hurt but at peace; that comes to a redeeming end, with book in hand to suggest that with the right person, even months after its inebriated end, you still feel better for all that you gave, and all that you learned; thankful for what you shared, and for the specific ways you grew.
