Radiohead and arthouse filmmakers go together like chocolate and peanut butter—or pretension and art school, depending on how you look at it. Paul Thomas Anderson directed a video for the single “Daydreaming” earlier this year, and now the band has debuted a new clip by Yorgos Lanthimos, director of this year’s hilariously bleak arthouse success The Lobster.
Set to “Identikit” from Radiohead’s new album A Moon Shaped Pool, the clip is short and deliberately vague, showing an old man sitting alone in a shabby, wood-paneled restaurant, lustily tearing into…something. Or are his hands empty? The placement makes it difficult to tell. This deliberately vague detail, combined with the video’s Old World setting, evokes a specific sense of place and an unsettling mood that’s classic Lanthimos.
This is actually the sixth in a series of vignettes made by prominent directors and posted to Radiohead’s Instagram page, and the second to feature “Identikit.” (The first came from Polish director Michal Marczack.) Other directors who have participated include Richard Ayoade, Weirdcore, Adam Buxton, and Oscar Hudson.