There are few absolute truths in this world, but one of them is that directors who continue to make music videos even after they’ve made a name for themselves in Hollywood are the best kind of directors. Don’t believe me? Look no further than Xavier Dolan, who has been recognized by both the Academy Awards and the Cannes Film Festival for movies like “It’s Only the End of the World” and “Mommy.” Despite this success, Dolan has never fully left the music video industry behind – and it is was with much celebration in both the film and music worlds that he recently reunited with singer-songwriter Adele on the “Easy On Me” music video.
This marks the second music video for the duo; Dolan and Adele had previously collaborated on the singer’s oft-parodied “Hello” video in 2016. Prior to the release of their latest music video, Dolan released a statement explaining that this collaboration was a long time coming. “I was honestly hoping for this to happen,” the filmmaker wrote in a statement sent to Pitchfork. “For me, there’s nothing stronger than artists reconnecting after years apart. I’ve changed. Adele’s changed. And this is an opportunity to celebrate how we’ve both evolved, and how we’ve also both remained faithful to our dearest themes. It’s all the same, but different.”
For thus less familiar with Dolan’s full body of work, the director has been described by The Playlist author Kyle Turner as our preeminent “Millennial Melodramatist.” Much has been made of Adele’s 2019 recent divorce – you can Google that if you’d like to know more, we’re not that kind of website – but it’s likely no mistake that the intersection of failed relationships and artistic expression lends itself to a filmmaker like Dolan. If there’s any justice in the world, this will become a semiregular occurrence between the two creators – an opportunity, as Dolan notes, for the duo revisit some of their “dearest themes.”