The year before last, singer Taylor Swift, known for her lyrical compositions, pleased fans with an updated ten-minute song All Too Well, which was first released nine years earlier. A short film was created for the re-release of the song. It is worth noting that this song is recognized by many critics and fans as Swift’s best work in her entire long career.
The video was filmed by the singer herself. Dylan O’Brien and Sadie Sink were cast as the lead actors. They play a man and a woman in love with each other, who are waiting for an inevitable and terrible break for both.
“I happened to be there, I remember it all too well,” – these words are accompanied in the film by those moments of the couple’s relationship, which are commonly called “bells”. What is the plot based on? Can the relationship depicted be called abusive? About everything in order.
The running time of 10 minutes and the very quality of the composition exceeded all expectations of Taylor Swift fans. Many people know that the lyrics of the singer’s songs are very often inspired by her real life experience. Although the singer tried not to disclose the names of those with whom she was in a relationship, nothing can be hidden from loyal fans. According to subtle hints, over and over again they found references to situations from the real life of the musician.
But few could expect such openness from Taylor. Imagine a situation that you are in a relationship with a person much older than yourself and are in seventh heaven with happiness. And then they tell you that this relationship is doomed to failure only because the age difference is too great. It was not difficult for fans to understand that it was about one of Swift’s former lovers – actor Jake Gyllenhaal, with whom the actress was in a relationship in her youth and who is nine years older. This was not hard to guess from the description of the scarf worn first by Taylor and then by Jake.
The singer’s fans immediately recognized hints in the lyrics that it was Jake who was responsible for what happened in this relationship. The “inhabitants” of Twitter joked that they would sue the man, because how can you recover from the emotional upheavals that this song brought them? And in other social networks, “red flags” were widely discussed, which can be seen in the clip.
But even if we consider the heroes of the song as some kind of abstract characters, we can come to many interesting conclusions. So, the majority of listeners saw the main reason for the problems and the subsequent breakup of relations as a big difference in age. And the lyrics confirm this. The heroine’s heart was broken by the words that if she were older, then the relationship would probably continue. It brings unbearable pain to her the realization that she will become older, and the girls of her beloved will be all the same age.
The audience was particularly struck by the scene from the short film, in which a girl and a man are having dinner together, and the heroine among men of the same age as her chosen one, feeling unsafe, takes her beloved by the hand. But he rejects this gesture, calmly continuing the conversation with his friends, and then for the first time shifts the blame on the girl, claiming that she herself invented what happened. Most of the viewers regarded this episode as a situation of gaslighting, but there were also those who challenged this point of view.
Psychologists who watched this clip claim that both partners do not have sufficient emotional maturity. It is difficult for them to be aware of their feelings and even more difficult to express them correctly. And the girl herself was engaged in exactly the same “gaslighting”. Although she was clearly angry about what happened, she proved to the guy that she was not angry at all. But in the end, both were able to come to the recognition that everything was as it was: the man pulled his hand away, and the girl got angry because of this. Relationships are difficult for both, because partners have not yet learned how to talk to each other and be honest first of all with themselves.
Thus, the plot of the song All Too Well shows us the tragedy that occurs in the absence of a constructive and open dialogue in a couple. Only by learning to be aware of our emotions and discuss them with our loved ones can we build a strong and happy family.
