‘Being Bon Iver’ could be the title of the Wisconsin singer-songwriter’s new video clip, paraphrasing the Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman film ‘Being John Malkovich’. The idea is simple, but conceptually juicy: ‘Day One’ poses a kind of dystopian scenario (depending on who, of course) in which Bon Iver (Justin Vernon) announces his retirement and calls a casting call to find his replacement.
This plot premise gives rise to the director Jos Diaz Contreras to develop a narrative in two directions. On the one hand, the casting idea allows for multiple cameos to be included in the video, adding a point of complicity and comedy: the actor Jacob Elordi (with a fake beard), St. Vincent (with yellow Marcos Llorente glasses), the actress Cristin Milioti (‘The Penguin’) and even a boy with a (fake) beard.
On the other hand, it proposes a meta-reflexive game about artistic identity, musical legacy and Vernon’s own figure. The song is part of the album ‘SABLE, fABLE’. The fact that this album seems to mark a turning point in Bon Iver’s career – “the sudden entry of light into the author’s dark life, serving as a summary of Vernon’s emotional life from his last LP, ‘i,i’ (2019), until today,” Gabriel Carey points out in our review – adds even more layers of meaning to the audiovisual proposal.
