Review: Miroir Noir at Mahmovies
Miroir Noir, a music documentary about Arcade Fire was screened at the closing night of Mahmovies winter season on 17th Feb. It is a beautiful film, on so many levels.
It follows the band during rehearsals, concerts and many random moments in various locations. It doesn’t contain any actual dialogue between the band members and the viewer, so there’s nothing like the band explaining what they do, what this song means, etc. You are thrown straight into the band’s music and their interaction amongst themselves – which is the real dialogue they are having with us, the viewer.
The cinematography is gorgeous, my heart almost skipped a beat when I saw the shot above in the movie. I love that shot so much, if it was framed and on a wall, I’d take it home with me. I cannot gush enough about the Vincent Moon and now I admire him even more.
The many intimate moments in this film makes you feel like you are with the band, whether the quirky scene in the elevator or at their concerts where you just want to jump up and down and sing/dance along to some of the tracks.
Here's a selection of my favourite parts from the film. If you like what you see, you can download the movie from www.miroir-noir.com and watch the whole thing. It will cost you between $5.99 and $13.99, depending on which format you download. It will be the best $5-14 you can spend this week.
Elevator
This is one of the most famous scenes from the movie. I just think it’s genius and crazy at the same time. I absolutely love how low-fi this performance is, especially the tearing up of pages from a magazine used as one of the instruments for this performance.
Windowsill
This scene starts and ends with my favourite shot mentioned earlier. Here too we have a musical performance in an elevator, which is usually overlooked because of pervious elevator scene, but I love this one too. This band just bangs away at anything around them to make music - it’s like they are the MacGyver of music industry.
No cars go
The following scene starts with a funny recording of a promo for their Miroir Noir album – the concept of their promo is discussion in itself which I might have another time. But for now, just follow the lead up to the last two minutes of this scene. I love how we get a drummer’s point of view from the stage. If this performance doesn’t make you want to be a drummer or makes you want to jump up and down and sing along, we cannot be friends.
Rebellion
This last clip starts with the performance of Rebellion and another example of how you almost feel like you are there whilst watching it. I do love how Vincent Moon follows William Butler up the ladder hastily, without any hesitation. The scenes after Rebellion are other various clips put together for this video, some already mentioned above, plus a few other good bits.
The screening of Miroir Noir was a great way to end the five fabulous weeks of great movie and music mash-ups. Mahmoud Kaabour announced the next season of Mahmovies will return after the summer where he promised we will look at new ways of interpreting movies and music, and possibly a few new experiments will be added to the mix. We can't wait.