This article was originally published on beingtheremag.com, an independent music and film magazine that ran from 2004 to 2007. It is presented here as part of the Being There Magazine archive.
By Adam Anklewicz | Being There Magazine, September 2005
Video: “Flowers In The Window”
Artist: Travis
Album: The Invisible Band
Director: Tom Carty
Released: 2002
Available on Singles from Epic
“One of the most beautiful things in the world is pregnant women.” – Tom Carty, director
Filmed outside of Capetown, South Africa, “Flowers In The Window” places Travis in the middle of a desert town filled with pregnant women. As the band is transported into the city in a taxi driven by a pregnant woman, they find themselves lost with an immediate need to see what the town has to offer. The band members travel through the small town on foot meeting the colorful characters of the locale and are left impressed with the locals.
Doing activities as simple as cutting hair or as difficult as breakdancing, the women can only impress the band and the audience. One woman endured the application of prosthetics, the heat of a South African day on a film shoot, and the eventual removal to make this music video stand apart from the rest.
A love song, “Flowers in the Window” looks forward to the prospect of a relationship and even possible offspring. Lead vocalist and songwriter Fran Healy sings “To plant new seeds and watch them grow / so there’ll be flowers in the window when we go,” looking into the events of his own life yet to come. “Flowers In The Window” grows from the seed of a lonely man who finds his love into this eventual relationship and following through to the future. The video continues this theme by looking at the future¹s
beginning: birth. The pregnant women in the video are strong and independent; the guiding force behind this new generation.
The town is a very cut off community and the cinematography immediately demonstrates this hot, dry and isolated venue. Through the use of lens flairs, harsh lighting and washed-out colors, the camera implies an atmosphere for the video. The large open spaces between buildings add to a feeling of isolation for the band as they go about their journey. Nothing is close by in the area surrounding the town, and establishing this is a brief long shot of nothing but the car followed by a close up interior of the taxi revealing a band weary from travel.
Women who are actually pregnant play the townspeople in the video; Healy described being on that set to be a moving experience. “Everyone who’s come from this planet has come from the same place,” says Healy, “It is the most important thing in the world.” An interesting set it must have been. The strength of these women shines through the video as some of them perform activities I cannot do without the added burden of carrying another being.
The town seems to be a Utopian society. Everyone is interested in pleasing themselves and having fun while also working to help others. Sadness, misery and despair never enter the picture; these women seem to be having the times of their lives. There’s only one (obvious, but fun) twist…