Angelina Jolie fans may enjoy seeing her in the 1994 Meat Loaf video Rock’N’Roll Dreams Come Through. In it she plays a teenage runaway who wanders into a dreamscape industrial complex. (The first line of the song is “You can’t run away forever.”)
Meatloaf first appears as a singing head inside a juke box. When Jolie is menaced by two thugs, the jukebox explodes, freeing Meatloaf to save her. At first Jolie might seem the proverbial damsel in distress being saved by a knight, but Meatloaf is more a father figure who shows her the distress that her running away has caused others. The refrain of the song is:
There’s always something magic, There’s always something new, And when you really, really need it the most, That’s when rock and dreams come through
Eventually Jolie is shown inside the jukebox, with music piped straight into her ears. She holds a crystal ball, suggesting acquired wisdom. Later an angel appears, hovering over the group that has gathered there.
At the end of the video Jolie walks through the gate of a suburban mansion, returning home. Despite the soft-focus photography, suburbia looks dull compared to the surreal world of the dream. But Jolie’s last-second smile suggests she has learned that she can use music to sometimes escape her ordinary existence by dreaming of a far more magical world.
Posted by Randall Shinn on April 17, 2009 in
Music
