20 Mar Video Review: Justin Timberlake’s “Mirrors” Reflection Is Deceiving

Justin Timberlake’s “Mirrors” video was released last night after his iHeartRadio TV special on the CW. The song was labeled by Billboard as epic on it’s release. Could the video reflect what Billboard said about the song.

The story is about William and Sadie as we see them as they are now, old and reflecting on their decades old relationship. We are taken back to a pool hall where it seems William and Sadie first met and over the course of the first 5 minutes, we are taken on their journey, from early LOVE with a simple gift of a book to a prophecy in photos that they will grow old together to pain of a loss, perhaps from a miscarriage, where we see books on the floor that the chapters of stories they thought were to be written with children will now never be read or experienced. Regardless, she comes to him, and he stands by her, being her mirror.

We are then taken of her looking at him while he sees a mannequin that reminds him of her beauty of her on their wedding day, where, to this day, after all this time, he sees her as his bride, not his wife. Is there anything more romantic?

We see a young William on the ground, it is his turn to have the pieces falling around him, and there is his woman Sadie, to lift him up and stand by him the way he stood by her. True LOVE. Fighting for now. This is where the breakdown part takes place and we see more creative designs made in the reflections of mirrors around the room. No fun house mirrors that falsify what we see.

She is taken back to the book he first got her, and although it seems that she dropped it, she never forgot it. He appears by her side, reading the book with her as we see her wedding ring. Unlike lost LOVE like in Katy Perry’s “One That Got Away”, they found each other through hardships and made it happen. We see that William has passed away and what we were seeing was the reflection of the relationship through Sadie’s eyes as he passed before her.

At the 5:45 part, we see Justin’s tribute to William and Sadie through his dance breakdown ala Fred Astaire. Fred Astaire would have posed less however. The mirror tricks play down with a reflection of a dancer morphing into one.

Even with the video being over 8 minutes long, there is too much for the viewer to take in, as you can see by my review which some will see as more of an assumption as to what is really going on. The truth is, we are being led to our own interpretation of things.

As beautiful as the video is, the live performance with the big band will do more for you in the long run than this video, MTV Video Music Award wins aside.-DocFB

Diagnosis: Romanticism is not dead. Just clean your mirrors more often….

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