The Dust Bin: Radiohead ‘Just’ [Video]

A look back at one of the band’s most engaging videos.

Radiohead have contributed several unforgettable videos in their near twenty years in the limelight. There’s the animated freak-fest of “Paranoid Android,” the gothic “Street Spirit (Fade Out),” and the edge of your seat suspense of “Karma Police,” which probably remains their most well known. Still something needs to be said for a clip that had millions of fans scratching their heads for years to come – the riveting “Just” video.

Director Jamie Thraves was handpicked by the band based on his award winning short film work. Thraves is one of the more unsung music video directors of his generation, possibly due to a smaller output than his high profile contemporaries like Mark Romanek and Spike Jonze. Since his breakthrough with “Just,” he’s garnered some notoriety, mainly for his video for Coldplay‘s “The Scientist” which also utilizes the plot driven/twist angle, but for the most part his name has remained far in the background.

Framed like a four minute “Twilight Zone” episode, “Just” opens with a a series of shots of a distraught middle-aged man getting in the bath tub. We next see him fully dressed, presumably for work, as he begins walking down a city street. Mid walk, the man slows to a pause and then proceeds to lie down on the sidewalk. Dialogue then enters through subtitles after another man trips over him, which quickly ensues with a gradually growing crowd building around the man asking why he refuses to get up.

One thing that should be addressed given this plot structure is how well the song compliments the action. On a record such as “The Bends” which is incredibly varied and well structured, “Just” is the album’s most tense track, barring the mad freak outs followed immediately on “My Iron Lung.” Dark and paranoid, the song carries with it a notion that the world is ending around us with no visual accompaniment necessary. This is also what makes the video more compelling – the song is not hindered by a heavy handed visualization of the lyrics or even the song’s dynamics, as all the street footage remains fairly calm throughout despite the band’s outbursts. Radiohead can be seen rocking out to the song in a nearby apartment which is intercut with the street footage.

The song’s enhancement of the video switches into high gear in the finale as both hit their climax. As the crowd remains persistent on finding out why the lying man won’t get up, it reaches Jonny Greenwood’s solo section followed by the final chorus which gets increasingly more intense with each measure. Greenwood’s squall spills over into the breakdown section, with older brother Colin’s bassline playing a catch with Phil Selway’s drumming and Thom Yorke’s acoustic guitar. It’s at this point when the lying man decides to concede to the crowd’s wishes, the now quiet part of the song assimilating the feeling of listening in on something important, while Jonny’s lead drone hangs like a cramp in your stomach.

The build up that takes place as the lying man’s unsubtitled mouth utters the answer is a brilliant succession of quick shots set to Jonny’s picking – a fast zoom in of the crowd followed by two shots of the lying man’s revelation, the second being an extreme closeup of just his mouth. An almost comical cutaway then takes place to a confused Radiohead looking out their apartment window down at the crowd (I mean they’re not exactly actors). What follows is an extremely chilling set of panning shots dissolving into each other as the song plays out its coda, displaying the entire crowd laying motionless across the sidewalk.

The question since then has always been “what could he possibly have said?” Obviously there’s no answer, which is a key factor to the power of the video. Every time you watch it, your mind gets pulled into what could be going through the protagonist’s head despite the fact that your time with him is under five minutes – hardly enough to get reasonably invested in a character. The curiosity is simple and universal, and something that would have made Rod Serling proud.

After following “The Bends” with a trio of highly acclaimed videos for “OK Computer,” the band shied away from the MTV world, mainly because it wasn’t theirs anymore. “Kid A” had no videos and “Amnesiac” and “Hail to the Thief”‘s promos delved more into forms of animation and visual art. While clips for “Knives Out,” “There There,” and later on “House of Cards,” are pretty stunning, nothing compares to the gripping portrayal of doom featured in the “Just” video.