Anton Corbijn and Depeche Mode, 1993–2009: Bodies, Theatre and Dark Humour
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The 1990s partnership becomes larger, more theatrical and more bodily. It is useful to study this period through individual films rather than reducing it to a general adjective such as dark. The work can be solemn, grotesque, intimate or knowingly ridiculous, sometimes within a single campaign.
I Feel You and the performing body
The official archive credits Corbijn with I Feel You in 1993. (Depeche Mode official archives) It is a useful starting point for asking how a performer’s body carries musical force. Posture, proximity and the relationship between face and camera become expressive material. A photograph freezes those choices; a video makes them unfold.
When watching, distinguish the energy of the performance from the pace of the editing. They can reinforce each other, but they are not the same thing. A held shot can make physical effort more palpable, while a cut can redirect attention from individual gesture to the group.
Walking in My Shoes and the strange figure
Walking in My Shoes, also directed by Corbijn, was released in 1993. The archive notes that a brief sequence was removed for the US version. (Depeche Mode official archives) The film’s distorted and theatrical figures offer a particularly strong example of visual ambiguity. An unfamiliar body can appear comic, vulnerable, threatening or ceremonial, depending on how it is framed.
Rather than assign a single meaning to every costume, pay attention to the act of looking. Who appears exposed? Who appears to judge? Does the scene invite identification with a figure or position that figure as a spectacle? These questions connect the images to the song without pretending that every prop is a code with one solution.
In Your Room and accumulated memory
In Your Room followed in 1994, with Richard Bell producing and Graham Brennan editing. (Depeche Mode official archives) By this point, an established partnership has a visual past available to it. Viewers can recognise recurring gestures, settings or objects, and recognition itself becomes part of the experience.
That is one of the distinctive possibilities of sustained music-video work. A film can address newcomers through its immediate atmosphere while offering another layer to those who remember earlier campaigns. A band’s image becomes an evolving body of references, not merely a succession of isolated advertisements.
The comedy of It’s No Good
Corbijn directed It’s No Good in 1997. (Depeche Mode official archives) Its knowingly unglamorous entertainment-world scenario is essential to an account of his range. The performer can be both magnetic and faintly embarrassing. Glamour is something enacted, and the film allows the audience to see the effort involved.
This complicates the familiar image of Corbijn as a supplier of austere seriousness. Humour can protect a band’s identity from becoming unbearably solemn. It can also make that identity more human: the star remains compelling while the machinery of stardom is gently exposed.
Continuing without claiming everything
The archive credits Corbijn on Barrel of a Gun and Useless in 1997, and Suffer Well in 2006. (Depeche Mode official archives) (Depeche Mode official archives) (Depeche Mode official archives) It credits other directors on many intervening releases. Wrong, for example, is Patrick Daughters’s 2009 film. (Depeche Mode official archives)
The distinction makes the history richer. A long-term visual collaborator can remain central to a band while other filmmakers contribute major work. Treating every strong Depeche Mode image as Corbijn’s would diminish the actual complexity of the band’s visual culture.
For a second viewing, move directly from Walking in My Shoes to It’s No Good. The contrast is a more convincing demonstration of range than a list of adjectives. One asks the familiar body to become strange; the other makes familiar show-business gestures strange by letting us see their awkwardness.