Anima: Radiohead lead Thom Yorke’s Netflix short film will mesmerise fans
- Twelve-minute short film is a musical companion to his forthcoming solo album of the same name, out July 19
- It was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, known for Phantom Thread and There Will Be Blood
Thom Yorke helped rewrite the rules of album releases in 2007 when his band, Radiohead, surprise-dropped “In Rainbows” online as a pay-what-you-want download.
More than a decade later, the avant-garde British rocker is looking to shake things up once more with Netflix film Anima. Streaming Thursday, the 12-minute short is a musical companion to his forthcoming solo album of the same name, out July 19.
The stunning new clip is directed by filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson ( Phantom Thread , There Will Be Blood), who collaborated with Radiohead on three music videos off their last album, 2016’s “A Moon Shaped Pool”.
The film opens with Yorke on a crowded subway, where he blearily locks eyes with a striking young woman (Yorke’s real-life girlfriend, Italian actress Dajana Roncione). Dressed in muted shades of blue and grey, the train’s passengers begin robotically dancing in unison, before spilling out into the metro station.
Things get more surreal from there, as Yorke and the dancers scale a giant white wall while performing gravity-defying acrobatics, as he doggedly searches for the mystery woman in an effort to return her missing bag. He eventually wakes up in a dimly lit alley where the two tenderly reconnect, dancing through the hazy streets of a European city while night turns to morning.