Cyberpunk Review » Bjork All is Full of Love

June 13, 2006

Bjork All is Full of Love

Movie Review By: SFAM

Year: 2000

Directed by: Chris Cunningham

Written by: Björk

Degree of Cyberpunk Visuals: High

Correlation to Cyberpunk Themes: Medium

Rating: 10 out of 10

Bjork All is Full of Love screen capture

You’ll be given love
You’ll be taken care of
You’ll be given love
You have to trust it

 

Overview: Bjork’s video, “All is Full of Love” was the first DVD single ever released. Looking at it, its not difficult to see why. This thing is beautiful, innovative, wonderfully shot. All is Full of Love raked in the awards back in 2000, including the MTV Best Special Effects award, the ITS Monitor award, and the Best Music Video at the 1999 London Effects and Animation (LEAF) awards. As I really don’t have a video category yet, I’m including this in my film short category.

 

Bjork All is Full of Love screen capture

Maybe not from the sources
You have poured yours
Maybe not from the directions
You are staring at

 

The Video: All is Full of Love opens with a female looking robot is being put together, while she is musing (singing). Eventually another twin robot enters the picture, and the two robots begin to embrace to the chorus, “All is full of love.” Throughout the entire video, the builder machines continue to make adjustments to the pair. The pacing is slow and deliberate, which mirrors the song.

 

Bjork All is Full of Love screen capture

Twist your head around
It’s all around you
All is full of love
All around you

 

The Visuals: All is Full of Love provides incredibly realistic and high production values. The result is an incredibly immersive posthuman experience. Almost immediately the viewer is drawn into the setting and does not leave until the video ends. The colors are almost all whites and blacks, with minor hues of purple interacting.

 

Bjork All is Full of Love screen capture

All is full of love
You just aint receiving
All is full of love
Your phone is off the hook
All is full of love
Your doors are all shut
All is full of love!

 

The Robots: The absolutely wonderful Robots in this video were built by Paul Catling. These robots have been pretty influential, and most certainly influenced the robots in the large scale cyberpunk movie, I, Robot. Also, I’d hazard a guess that this video also most likely influenced artist Nicolas Leblanc, who did the robots in the Cyberpunkreview header.

 

Bjork All is Full of Love screen capture

All is full of love
All is full of love…

 

The FX: Chris Cunningham used Glassworks for all the FX in this video. Glassworks does a wonderful job of blending the actual robot with Bjork’s face. But really, it appears the process was even more complex than that, as Chris Cunningham relates in an interview with American Cinematographer:

 

“Every single shot in the video has about four layers. The first element is the shot of the set and the robot prop doing nothing, which we’d film for about 21 seconds. We’d then remove the prop Björk robot and put (the real) Björk in with her face painted white and wearing a blue suit. Using a mix of the (master shot and a live feed of Björk in frame) on the video monitor, we’d then try to match up as much as possible. It was a pretty crude and fairly terrifying method of shooting the video. For the Avid editing, I basically had a series of stills of a robot on a set and some crude shots of Björk wearing a blue suit with her face painted white. There was a definite feeling of insecurity all the way until the first couple of shots were finished in post, when I could finally tell whether it was working or not.” (American Cinematographer)

 

Bjork All is Full of Love screen capture

All is full of love
All is full of love…

 

The Bottom Line: Truly, Bjork’s All is Full Of Love is an absolutely terrific cyberpunk music video. I can’t say enough how much I think of this. Give it a watch.

~See movies similar to this one~

This post has been filed under Short Film by SFAM.

Comments

June 14, 2006

Bergo said:

Hey SFAM,

Firstly, the “Give it a watch” link at the bottom is busted.

Apart from that, thanks for finding this .. it looks really interesting, which isn’t surprising, Bjork has done other stuff I like.

SFAM said:

Hi Bergo, thanks for the catch. It’s fixed now. I’ve also uploaded a copy to my server (19 Meg download), although there appear to be like 10 versions of this already floating around on the internet.

Net said:

Mr. C’s work is amazing! I esp. like the work he did, as you know, Aphex Twin, and Autechre. He is admired by so many for many reasons. But this particular video has always been emotionally provocative for me, and not due to the sexual nature of it, but the idea of contact and intimacy and consciousness of that intimacy and what that means amongst humans and soon to be droids, that may be.. and all the possibilities that allready exist around our own slight awareness of our own intimacy with in society which would be then compounded once this becomes reality, the good and the bad, moves me very much.
sigh, I guess the movie AI adresses this to a point..
Net

SFAM said:

I agree, Net. In just a few minutes, Cunningham has been able to convey a whole sequence of possibilities. The two female robots, one mentoring the other, engaging one another in sexual contact suggests quite a few thoughts all on its own. On the one hand, if we take this to be a depiction of some semblance of a future (I don’t think it was intended to be, but is clearly more a commentary on issues in the present, but still…), this suggests that androids feel emotion, stick together, and most likely are choosing the personality (expressed through body type and actions) of who want to become.

I also wonder whether these are really robots or cyborgs. Their eyes and lips look human (well, they are of course), and they have braincases. Similar to the “Cost of Living,” perhaps this is a body choice of the future, and these two beings are now re-united in new bodies.

Case said:

Chris Cunningham is an absolute genius. His video for Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy,” while in no way cyberpunk, is still one of the greatest (and most downright disturbing) music videos ever created. His short film, “Rubber Johnny” is another work of twisted brilliance. I highly recommend his installment in the “Directors” series on DVD (which contains the “Full of Love” video and the aforementioned “Daddy,” as well as several other pieces of his work). Although, when watching them, it makes the sting all that much worse when recalling his failed adaptation of Gibson’s “Neuromancer.”

gridbug said:

GREAT video! First time I saw it on the Chris Cunningham DVD I was stunned. One of the most impressive visuals I’ve ever seen.

I might need to watch it again, but weren’t BOTH bots Bjork (say that five times fast!)? :D

SFAM said:

Hi Gridbug, yeah, both bots were exactly identical. This is what made the love sequence take on that completely surreal type quality.

And Case, I had forgotten that it was Chris Cunningham that lost out on Neuromancer. Yeah, that is truly a shame.

gridbug said:

If memory serves, didn’t Chris Cunningham do some design work on the well-meaning-but-ultimately-flawed Stallone Judge Dredd movie? Either the ABC robot (Hammerstein) or Mean Machine, I don’t recall which.. though i may be way off base as well. :)

And yes, I’m also waiting for someone to give Cunningham truckloads of money to make a feature film! His take on Neuromancer would have been brilliant… in the meanwhile, I’ll settle for his Rubber Johnny short.

Err… you know what I mean… *lol*

May 9, 2007

Kate said:

Did I get the wrong end of the stick? I was under the impression that the narrative of the video was played in reverse. In this reading, it also becomes punsihment that the smaller bjork robot is being disassembled for ‘acting like a human’.

June 3, 2007

ASS said:

DID THEY HAVE SEX?

June 8, 2007

angela candia said:

very very good

January 7, 2008

SV said:

“Did I get the wrong end of the stick? I was under the impression that the narrative of the video was played in reverse. In this reading, it also becomes punsihment that the smaller bjork robot is being disassembled for ‘acting like a human’.”

Eh. Wow :) Hehe, selective perception too much ;)? No, the entire video is about opening your senses to love, and playing punishment in reverse would make little sense.

August 1, 2008

Dundie said:

I simply just love the video. Its so beautiful. Robots has feelings too.

September 9, 2008

redfive29 said:

…when i first saw this ‘incredible video’ i couldn’t speak…it was/is so haunting & utterly beautiful’ and my feeling was and still is, that even though this may be the future’ of our humanity,there will still be a part of ourselves that knows the “Truth”….of the ‘Spirit…and that “Love” is an undeniable’ part of who we are[in essence] as,
things become more ‘mechanized’ we should not forget this’ part of ourselves…
they’ may build robots and computers to think’ and feel emotions’ etc. etc.
i hope that ‘Love’ will prove to be too’complex’ for ‘the machine’…..

September 16, 2008

ZeroDivision said:

redfive29: “i hope that ‘Love’ will prove to be too’complex’ for ‘the machine’…..”

They explored that idea in “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” with a terminator impersonating the husband of a software developer for months to manipulate her work.
As a software developer and a human, I believe the most difficult challenge for those lucky enough to work with robot AI is teaching them how to learn and understand new behaviors for themselves. Even without that, they’re great at following instructions and reacting to expected responses, which is how I get along with my human girlfriend every day. It won’t be particularly hard to tell a robot how to do everything it needs to convince humans that it can feel love. And that’s all that matters, isn’t it?

November 9, 2008

Freak_Geek said:

Yeah. Robots can fuck. I wonder are they using somekind of plug/unplug ‘tools’ like my iPod headphones while mating? Gee… Technology makes me horny. *Geek mode: on*

November 19, 2008

SFAM said:

Hi ZeroDivision, you raise a great question. As to whether this is all that matters, many of us are concerned with the question of actual sentience.

October 22, 2010

Glassworks said:

Hi Guys, please update the link to the Bjork Video as our website has recently changed http://www.glassworks.co.uk/content/all-full-love&search-type=brand&term=bjork

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