“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” Taylor Swift wields this indelible Pablo Neruda quote to set the tone for a song Jake Gyllenhaal thought had finally died down once and for all. But what he never could have planned for was that Red (Taylor’s Version) would be the next album she chose to re-record after Fearless (Taylor’s Version). After all, wouldn’t any “logical” person go in the order in which the albums were actually released? Well, obviously not, since Tay chose to bypass her self-titled debut when commencing this entire process.
And so, here we are with another album out of chronological order: Red. And as part of wanting these re-recordings to cater even more to fans the second time around, Swift has homed in on the long-time “underdog” and “darling” of the record, “All Too Well.” Fortunately for Swift, she had no problem giving the people what they wanted, as she herself has always been partial to the track. This much was made clear when she told Jimmy Fallon during her Veterans Day appearance on his late night talk show, “When I was writing the Red album, I knew I had a favorite on the album and it was a song called ‘All Too Well.’ But often times, my personal favorites don’t line up with songs that end up being singles or having videos, I always just have these favorites where I’m like, ‘That one’s just my favorite.’ But what happened on this album was this song became the fans’ favorite on its own. My favorite and their favorite song aligned.” Much to Jake Gyllenhaal’s chagrin. However, also much to Dylan O’Brien’s delight, who just so happens to look very similar to the fellow actor. And, as we all know with Swift, nothing is ever “sheer coincidence.” Including the age difference between O’Brien and his co-star in the “short film,” Sadie Sink.
With that aforementioned quote from Neruda commencing the video, we have both briefly high hopes and extremely dashed ones. After all, what follows the title card could only, in the end, amount to a schmaltz-filled Madewell ad that gives Lorde’s “Solar Power” one a run for its money. Besides, how could anyone forget when the bulk of Swift’s oeuvre is aimed at ensuring that the men in her life never do after “the love” is over? Gyllenhaal being the latest after Joe Jonas to experience this reboot of their relationship drama with Swift’s second re-recording of an album. Alas, Gyllenhaal has it far worse in that now there’s a new music video to forever immortalize what happened between them. Because yes, Swift has done something that Justin Timberlake has been maligned for retroactively—getting a lookalike of his ex to be in “Cry Me A River.”
Divided into sections including “An Upstate Escape,” “The First Crack in the Glass,” “Are You Real?,” “The Breaking Point,” “The Reeling,” “The Remembering” and “Thirteen Years Gone,” the “film” is, in plain speak, bloviating “white people shit.” Worse still, bougie white people shit. And yes, we all know it’s “sacrilege” to speak “ill” (even if it’s the truth) in any way of “America’s sweetheart” after she was proven innocent in the whole Kimye debacle, but someone has to point out that the video is, in essence, the kind of basic bitch porn that we might have assumed went out when the 00s and 10s did. You know, the “fall trope” that conjures images of Uggs, red scarves and Starbucks cups (a corporation that knew all too well not to pass up a synergistic promotion of Red [Taylor’s Version] at their countless stores).
In this sense, Swift has become something of the musical equivalent of Wes Anderson, getting white folk hard for every project she releases, and making no apologies about the inherent whiteness of her visuals. Sure, there was the “Lover” video, when she “dared” to make a Black man the object of her affection, but somehow that attempt at “inclusivity” came across more like a certain Black Mirror episode. And even “All Too Well” is sure to highlight Swift’s post-“I live in New York” need to “put eyes on diversity” by way of the people selected to appear at the dinner table when “Him” famously drops “Her” hand, but, again, there’s a total manufactured quality to it.
The narcissistic air of the average white girl (or at least the kind we’re constantly shown in media) is ramped up when Sadie Sink—obviously playing Taylor when she was in her early twenties—asks “Brandon” (that’s the name O’Brien revealed for his character in an interview), “Are you for real?” He returns, “What do you mean?” Totally unaware of how self-involved it’s going to sound, she replies, “I don’t know, I just feel like maybe I made you up.” Yes, we know she meant it like “you’re too good to be true so you can’t be real,” yet it ultimately just sounds as though “Her” is a little girl who still believes she holds the imaginative power to create and control worlds. This small detail only scratches the surface of the characteristics of All Too Well: The Short Film that make for decided whiteness on the front of egocentricity. Constantly wanting to make sure feelings are “validated” and “acknowledged.” Because that’s the luxury that has always been presented to white people.
Speaking of white, there is, to be sure, the requisite couple trip upstate to see the fall leaves as “Her,” unapologetically wearing an argyle sweater, jumps on Brandon’s back to intensify the saccharine vibe of it all. In fact, we’re barely two minutes in to an almost fifteen-minute video and the Vomit-o-Meter is pushed to the max. The setup of the shots—complete with the “vintage” effect of a square shape around the frame—is almost something out of the Lana Del Rey playbook…except Del Rey would likely opt for a more surreal narrative incorporated into the mix to make it slightly less cheesy. This also includes Her getting upset and scandalized by Brandon casually letting go of and dismissing her hand with a pat at the table while they’re in a social setting. Which, to be frank, is such a white person’s thing to be offended by. What’s more, only a white person would repress that emotion in the moment and bottle it up until confronted about her surly demeanor, whereupon she would finally unleash her wrath about what was, to be frank, a non-moment. And sure, as The Wedding Singer iterates to us, it’s all about the “little things” in relationships building up to one big end, but this is not one of those little things. Or at least it shouldn’t be. In this regard, the viewer can’t help but be as irritated as “Brandon” in the scenario when Her complains, “You dropped my fucking hand! What am I supposed to do with that?” To quote this bia back to her, “Are you for real?” Like, please, we beg you: get a real goddamn problem. Even Brandon has to shout, “It’s fucking selfish. It’s literally like—it’s so crazy.” Of course, we know Swift’s intent here is to make it seem like Gyllenhaal was gaslighting her and that she was forced to question her emotions with, “Oh, so I’m selfish now?”
The question “Are You Real?” comes up again as the demarcation of the next segment, during which Her and Him do some more frolicking about (“dancing ’round the kitchen in the refrigerator light”) to accent how things are hunky-dory once more. Shit, they’re even staring at a tangible newspaper on the couch together, presumably doing a crossword puzzle. Wholesome, picturesque white people shit at its finest. But apparently, that isn’t enough to keep Brandon engaged as we cut to “The Breaking Point” segment wherein he arbitrarily decides to break up with her, predictably setting Sink’s character off into a frenzy of rage.
Per Taylor’s lyrical account, he cites the age difference between them being a key issue (“You said if we had been closer in age, maybe it would’ve been fine”)—not, say, the fact that she’s a petulant basic puta. At the same time, Gyllenhaal has been happy to fulfill Swift’s “joke,” “I’ll get older, but your lovers stay my age.” Whether that’s Swift’s continued narcissism about Gyllenhaal trying to recapture their relationship with each new twenty-something girl he dates or the simple fact that men will forever and always prefer younger snatch is at one’s discretion.
The ironic aspect about the lyric, “Maybe this thing was a masterpiece till you tore it all up” is that Swift was clearly made so insecure and frazzled by this relationship that she could hardly qualify it as a “masterpiece.” But then, that’s the standard-issue white girl dichotomy: simultaneously hating the one they love and loving the one they hate. Not to worry, however, Her will turn her pain into profit (as so many whites do) by writing a book about the whole thing on, drumroll please, a typewriter. The number one accoutrement of “white people writing.” Of course, we can only imagine how bad the book might be, perhaps even worse than Carrie Bradshaw-league “prose,” complete with a cover that looks like it was ripped off from Shel Silverstein.
And so, with a crowd in the bookstore that seems to be filled primarily with white ladies, Taylor makes it evident to Jake (literally the name of the gaffer she got to play “Him, Later On”) that she can take their “plaid shirt days” and repurpose them into never-ending normcore gold (as also evidenced on 2020’s folklore and evermore).
