Released on February 6, 2018 was the music video for Kendrick Lamar & SZA's All the Stars, directed by Dave Meyers & the little homies. Done as part of an album of music inspired by the film Black Panther, it could be seen as simply a piece of marketing trying to cloak itself in cultural relevance. However, the very existence of Black Panther is culturally relevant and in contrast to essentially all prior Marvel films it has something to achieve besides get people excited for the next film. And the video for All the Stars is absolutely something in its own right.
The film opens with Kendrick Lamar on a boat travelling across a wave of humanity. Human arms and hands lift up and sway, conveying the impression of a moving sea. It's the kind of visual metaphor that is handled so well in the domain of music videos and short films but sorely lacking in mainstream Hollywood cinema. There's a lot of compositing going on here, but from the outset we understand that we need to participate with our imagination here and so rather than cynically decrying the scene as "fake", we instead focus on what the film is trying to tell us rather than how it is doing so. It's a lot like watching a play with gorgeous backdrops - we know the sets are all fake, but we are eager to go along with it. Opening on such a strong visual metaphor isn't just attention grabbing, it also immediately engages us, causing us to subliminally register the reference as "clever" and then pat ourselves on the back for having noticed it. This switches our brains from looking for the seams in the sets to instead looking for the meaning behind them. By opening on a strong but easy metaphor, the film primes us to engage with its semiotic content instead of dissecting its technical merits. Having said that the technical prowess of the film is strong, so that when viewed through the extreme compression of online video-streaming it takes a fairly discerning eye to be much bothered by it.
The scene actually opens with a close-up of the hands and arms waving, before cutting to a wide shot of the whole scene. Several intercuts with pure black help give space to the scenes and build a sense of anticipation that is in sync with the steady drum-beat of the audio. The next scene contains another strong visual metaphor, whereby a distinguished matriarch's gown serves as a large tent for a group of black children, into which Lamar walks. Next we are treated to a constellation of stars forming the continent of Africa, into which the camera dives down into a space of stars where SZA is singing and dancing. The video continues through a series of visually stunning scenes and costumes, never lingering on any set-piece long enough for the viewer to soak up all the details. The video never gives in to being overly impressed with itself and as a result leaves us wanting more. There are some gorgeous colour palettes on display and while many scenes are shot from a fixed set of views (generally wide and closeup with a small amount of camera movement) emphasising their existence as sets, we move from set to set quickly enough for this to not present an issue. As with the moments of pure black near the beginning of the film, the sense of space emerges in the implied connections between scenes rather than through the scenes themselves.
There is one scene where Lamar traverses what appears to be a burnt out forest while black panthers dart along between the trees. This scene has a greater sense of space and depth than most of the shots and provides a strong lasting image. In a sense the video is a grabbag of cool ideas related to the ideas put forward by Black Panther, of black empowerment and afro-futurism, but these are not scenes we see everyday, and they are executed so well, so that their presentation here comes across as a sort of tapestry rather than some sort of mish-mash.
In one stunning scene we are introduced to a space of black and gold, with geometric decorations forming right angles. Smartly the camera takes a tilted position, slowly rotating, creating visual offset to the linearity on display. This beautiful set has come under criticism by British-Liberian artist Lina Iris Viktor for stealing her work without crediting her, which is indeed very unfortunate, and worth mentioning if only to draw more attention to her work.
The video closes with Lamar walking into an inner sanctum, treading water, seeking either guidance or approval (or perhaps both) from a quartet of matriarchs or goddesses who tower over him at super-human size. A similar scale technique was used in the much maligned 2016 film Gods of Egypt (incidentally featuring Chadwick Boseman who stars in 2018's Black Panther) to distinguish the gods from the mortals and I found a comparison to that film unavoidable as a result. But before diving into that short discussion I just want to point out how refreshing it is to see a video featuring blacks in a diversity of contexts (not just as urban thugs or as high rollers, but in imagined tribalism and opulence and in very real African attire) and to see black women portrayed in a matriarchal role: strong, confident, and caring. And I suppose the feeling I get watching this is a sort of counterbalance to the anger that arose with the whitewashing of the cast of Gods of Egypt. As it exists, Gods of Egypt is a flash in the pan mythological adventure overly impressed with its own spectacle. To those asking what difference it would have made if it had been a predominately black cast, you need only watch this video.
