Revolution 909

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Still from Roman Coppola's video for Revolution 909 (1998) by Daft Punk © Virgin 1999 (DVD)

In a large American city somewhere, the police are breaking up a rave party attended by young people, and the sounds merge with an instrumental piece by Daft Punk. The curious gaze of one of the girls being filmed falls on a red spot on the shirt of one of the policemen. The video then travels in time to the origin of the spot: a pasta dinner the policeman ate just before going on duty. It does not stop there, however, but continues—in the style of a documentary film or a cooking show reduced to its essentials—to the prehistory of the meal: from the moment a tomato grows and is harvested to the time it is used as an ingredient in a recipe for an Italian sauce (which is also presented in subtitles). The policeman, distracted by the young woman’s gaze that appears to have been provoked by this trip through time, unwittingly gives her an opportunity to escape. Thanks to the subtle use of music—from background noise for the framing first and last scenes to the soundtrack for the harvesting and cooking scenes—the video plays with the usual expectations of a (narrative) music video and at the same time communicates, by means of clever changes of perspective and genre, with irony and extreme succinctness something about the protagonists, the worlds from which they come, and the authority they have: the policeman’s mother, who gives clear and accurate instructions for the pasta recipe; the policeman, who breaks up the rave party but is then distracted by the spot of sauce on his shirt; and the girl, who thus escapes the clutches of the police.