The video clip for “Ekki Mukk” by Icelandic Post-Rock band ‘Sigur Ros’ is an exceptional exploration of film. While a music video, the short film utilises the soundtrack to supplement the video, rather than the traditional format of video supplementing the music. This is immediately obvious as voice over plays over song, drawing attention away from the song and onto the story being told, with the music rising to heighten the emotional impact of the visuals. In parts of the video, the song stops as well, pausing to focus on a fox’s cries in the distance as a man thinks introspectively about how lost he is and how he no longer wants to be alone, building to a confrontation between a wounded fox which is briefly nurtured and then decomposes.

Not only is this short film experimental in how it uses the music video format, but also in its narrative through its powerful metaphor. One review of the short film relates the music video to a Franz Kafka quote “You are free and that is why you are lost”, stating that the journey the man makes in the video has significance because we lend it such. Another interpretation of the video clip is that this journey is an internal one, with the fox being a physical manifestation of the man and when it decomposes, so does his worries and struggles. Furthermore the meadow he is lost in symbolising his own self, thus when the fox returns to the earth and is laid to rest so is his vulnerabilities.

Personally I find this to be one of the greatest music videos as both the music and video supplement each other perfectly. Music makes video watchable, yet it also heightens the connection a viewer creates with the content, something which Ekki Mukk confirms. While there are lyrics in the song, they are song in the bands made up language “Hopelandic” (A mix between Icelandic and Hope?), but it is just another instrument in the foreground supplementing the atmosphere.

Thinking About Being Lost – Ekki Múkk and Existential Crisis