Beyond Here Lies Nothing

As the music video starts, an angry, perhaps disheveled looking, man is walking down the sidewalk. As the man walks around the corner it becomes clear that he is in a rougher neighborhood. He unlocks the door to enter his run-down apartment, and he quickly shuts and locks the door back. He then walks to a poorly lit section of the room and grabs a knife. He turns and walks to the bedroom door with an evil look on his face. As the door is opened the audience can see ropes on the bed and bloodstains. Next, the man walks through the door and is hit with a bottle by a dirty, beat up, young female. She frantically looks for a way to escape until the man regains his composure. They fight in the kitchen, each side gaining the upper hand at certain moments. She hits him with a frying pan, and he hits her head on the wall to knock her out. She then wakes up as he is dragging her back to the bedroom, snatches the knife the man had dropped in the fight, and stabs him in the abdomen. She escapes the house and gets in a car, running over the man as he chases after her. Then, unexpectedly, she gets out of the car and kisses him. 

There are many observational clues throughout the video that lead us to patterns in the video. For example, there are many beer bottles in the house. In nearly every scene there are numerous beer bottles strewn through the house to help the reader obtain some important information about the inhabitants. We can assume that the man is a troubled soul, and may have a drinking problem. Also, the camera follows some very important patterns throughout the video. When the woman is winning the fight the camera is pointed upwards in a way that makes her appear powerful. The opposite is true when the man is winning. Also, the house has many locks on its doors. Not only is the outside door locked, but other doors such as the bedroom. This leads the audience to believe that the man is keeping someone hostage at the house, and more abstractly, he is attempting to conceal a dark secret. The lighting scheme also follows a pattern in the video. The house is dark with most of the light filtrating through the windows. This gives the house an eerie feeling. Also, when the man grabs the knife, the scene darkens, perhaps giving the reader a sense of the violence that is to come. Also, when the woman gets knocked out she knocks over the T.V. The light from the T.V went out, and so did she. (As a side observation, I noticed that Bob Dylan was on the T.V. before it was broken.)

From all of these observations and patterns, it becomes clear that the overall theme is domestic violence. The man is portrayed as an evil man, perhaps tying her down on the bed and doing terrible things to her. Even though the man treats her so badly, she still keeps coming back to him because it is all she knows. The song says "Don't know what to do without it, Without this love that we call ours." The woman doesn't know what to do or where to go without her lover. may be so used to getting beat by her captor, that she begins to identify with the man as a lover, a phenomenon known as Stockholm Syndrome. Even though their relationship is full of violence, they still have a close bond that may not be easy to break.