Fix You

Until yesterday I had only heard the song Fix You by Coldplay once.  Actually I had only heard the first verse even at that.  It was on an episode of Ricky Gervais' Extras in which Chris Martin (Gwyneth Paltrow's husband and lead singer of Coldplay guest starred.) This clip shows what I saw and heard then.



Having somehow never heard it before I assumed it was just a little bit they made up to do on the show and that was the end of that... until yesterday.

I don't think I've ever mentioned here that I really like the movie WALL-E and in particular there is one scene that is one of my favourite movie moments ever.  It's the scene where Eve is putting WALL-E back together again.  More on that later but for now I'll just say that I was reviewing some of my YouTube favourites yesterday and a clip of that scene was one that I rewatched.  Following that I just clicked on one of the "related clips" on the side just for fun and this is what I found.



I think this is the best amateur movie clip montage/music video that I have ever seen. It's pretty much perfect in fact.  It really captures the essence of the whole movie and the song fits so well.  As the clip began I first realized that this was the same song that Apple's daddy sang on Extras.  Having not been particularily impressed with the short version at that time I wasn't expecting much but decided to watch to the end anyway. About two and a half minutes into the song the guitar kicks in and I suddenly realized that there was going to be much more to this song than I had imagined.

The entrance and urgency of the guitar expresses so well Eve's sudden change when she discovers the plant and WALL-E's desperate chase as he tries to reach her before she is taken away by the space ship.  The drums join in to bring the music to full force as the ship blasts off with WALL-E barely hanging on.  The song is finally complete and epic when the now multivoice harmony vocals return to compliment WALL-E's sense of wonder as he does the old hand drag through planetary rings vortex trick. (Suddenly sticking your hand out of the car window on the highway seems extra mundane.)  Of course the song must return to it's humble beginnings at the end and this too fits with the end of the movie. 

Finally as promised, the reason that the scene where Eve fixes WALL-E is one of my favourites.  The urgency and speed with which Eve acts is what I love.  It surely wouldn't have made any difference to the outcome if Eve hadn't worked quite so quickly.  But she loved WALL-E and her desperation and unnecessary speed showed it.  The exact moment that still gets me even now when I recall it is when Eve, having finished rebuilding WALL-E whips up her arm and blows a hole in the ceiling to immediately bring in WALL-E's life giving sunlight.  Surely no one would have thought it strange if she had taken the extra half second to move WALL-E back outside herself but to her every millisecond counted.  It was if she was trying to save him from drowning.  That is what I love most about the movie WALL-E and this newly discovered YouTube clip brings it all back to me.

A great song and an inspired video, the two together are much greater than the sum of their parts.  Another in my growing list of YouTube favourites.