By José Gandue @Gandour
It's been a long time since we last saw each other. a video that played so intensely and accurately with symbolism. A video clip where, if you play along, you discover in many of its visual spaces a multitude of messages that appropriately and excitingly complement the song's narrative. The singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler presents his topic Motion and knows how to promote it intelligently with an audiovisual product which shocks the viewer with its discourse on immigration.
The metaphors used in the film completely avoid the obvious. Drexler, a universal Uruguayan, resident in Spain and a constant orbital navigator, Instead of using the drama of obvious images, it uses different horizons to exalt the forced and voluntary journeys of those who cross borders to seek other spaces of survival.
The clip begins in the Sierra Tarahumara, in Chihuahua, Mexico, where the Rarámuri, "those with light feet," reside, and there you can see a woman who won a special 100-kilometer race, dressed in traditional attire, which begins a long-distance race, spectacularly followed by a drone that never loses sight of her. and captures in a special way the complex landscape it traverses. In turn, Drexler, from Madrid, uses a beautiful space, the library of the Spanish Cultural Heritage Institute, to use the circularity of the building and the scenography of the thousands of books on display, to convey the beautiful feeling of the journeys that reading generates in us. The journey is also mental, it is intellectual. Movement can be measured in kilometers, but it can also be measured in imaginary terms. The combination of different panoramas excites and moves. The translation of each planetary view holds, like a treasure, the required metaphor, while the singer insistently repeats in the chorus «"I'm not from here, but neither are you.".
Motion, promotional single from the album Ice Lifesaver, presents in his video The work of a mature and sensitive artist who does not need to exaggerate his mannerisms to move the listener. and make them understand the message. Drexler knows how to communicate with his audience, and that's something to be grateful for these days. This work is a good entry point to discover a delightful album, worthy of repeated listens.