The music video triggers several ideas to pace through your mind while trying to truly comprehend the visuals on screen. The palette is cool, the colours minimal and the location stunning. It is seemingly the story of a protagonist and his relationship with a horse. There is a surreal, otherworldly, abstract emotion that can be associated with the whole video, only further supplemented by its mesmerising and closely controlled vocals. The writing and the visuals exhibit a sophisticated weaving together, with not even a single extra moment wasted on either. The narrative takes its time to build, and yet does not under-utilise any component or element to put forth its message. Both the video and the song are essentially about power, race and the colour of the skin perhaps. It is a reminder to not trivialise someone's well-directed anger and emotion and simply render their discontent a "lover's quarrel". The lyrics demand an equality which seems to be missing when a disagreement is defined in this manner, hinting that it is one of equals. However, how can it be a conversation of equals if even the mere presence of this discrimination is brushed aside? The video raises this question in a poignant manner and leaves the viewer grappling with its potential answers.

Quarrel | Short Film of the Day

Poetry is a powerful tool for the revolution of thought, one that is capable of making you sit up, pay attention and bring reformative change. The aspiration for this reform also rests at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement which shook the world in 2020 as it went ahead to explicitly state what should be a well-accepted fact - someone with a darker skin tone does not mean they deserve to be discriminated against or are any less worthy of equality. What the narrative of the film does is add to the same conversation, raising pressing, politically-charged questions, but with the lyricism of poetry. It is marked by music and dance, suggesting a fluid, free-flowing space of expression as a woman moves gracefully in the vast expanse of a field. Unfortunately, when it comes to racial identity, this freedom still remains a pipe-dream. However, in the face of systemic oppression, the ideas of equality, freedom and justice will reign free. The black experience will not be obliterated by the weapons of a discriminatory few, becomes the overarching message of the narrative, along with the reminder to take the first step, which might sometimes also mean looking within. No act of change, as small as it might be, is inconsequential, further asserts the film, leaving you with a poignantly moving sense of hope.

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