5 Radiohead Albums as Films
Since its beginnings, Radiohead has stood apart from other bands for their experimental, often eclectic approach to sound and songwriting. Their unique sound and artistic vision can translate into the color, design, movement, lighting, performance, atmosphere and narrative of a film.
Ultimately, the intersection between music and film—using Radiohead’s discography as an example—can allow us to see how an unrelated artist and art form can evoke feelings, atmospheres, and narratives reminiscent of those of another medium. I want encourage fans of Radiohead’s music to explore the films listed below, or for those who’ve watched and enjoyed these films to listen to their paired albums. My qualifications on the topic are that I listen to a lot of Radiohead and call movies “films.” Clear-cut evidence I know what’s up.
Pablo Honey (1993) - Little Miss Sunshine (2006) dir. Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton
Tense family dinners. Butting heads. The ceaselessly honking yellow van. Dwanye screaming at his family that he hates them. Olive dancing on the pageant stage. When Thom Yorke croons into the mic that he’s a creep and a weirdo, I hear an adolescent voice of anger, disillusioned by a crappy world. Pablo Honey is bright, scrappy, and exhilarating, and it exists in a world where the adults are fucked-up and only the kids (Yorke at 24 in 1992) make sense. Little Miss Sunshine holds the same youth and electricity—it’s about growing up and pushing past, despite the crap.
OK Computer (1997) - The Thing (1982) dir. John Carpenter
There is a distinct feeling of otherworldliness contained within the dense, electronic noise of OK Computer—fragments of machinelike voices, robots, static, electric guitars like distorted, distant screams. It is alien, and electrifying. It’s unclear whether the average listener’s experience internally translates to unease, or catharsis. In a similar fashion, much of The Thing is tightly wound, tense with the uncertainty of a threat that imitates humanity, but is horrifyingly far from it. Carpenter, through his carefully constructed sets, sounds, and direction, achieves an atmosphere that is unsettling yet refreshing. To me, both OK Computer and The Thing feel like sending calls for help via an ancient, staticky radio, trapped by the stifling arctic snow—and you can’t be sure that whoever receives your message is human.
Kid A (2000) - I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020) dir. Charlie Kaufman
I’m Thinking of Ending Things and Kid A are united in their incoherency—they are collaged, papier-mâchéd-together works of art, bits and pieces of half-meanings that are gorgeous when glanced at from afar yet perplexing when examined closely. Almost delicately pretty and so shatterable.
In Rainbows (2007) - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) dir. Michel Gondry
Trying, and trying over. Walking past a non-stranger. Love’s transience. Push and pull. Intimacy, distance, memory. Both album and film are deeply dreamlike, surreal and abstracted, yet guttingly genuine. Love is both manic and mellow, we learn—when we reach for someone, it’s out of desperation. When we separate, everything moves to and from that point in time.
A Moon Shaped Pool (2016) - Decision to Leave (2022) dir. Park Chan-Wook
Jang Hae-jun and Song Seo-rae of Decision to Leave are if yearning was two good-looking Asian people, despairingly trapped in each other’s magnetic, doomed orbit. There is a longing there, between them, that screams to be fulfilled, dappled with the regret of past choices. Love when it is just out of reach is haunting, but it being so doesn’t negate its irresistible novelty. A Moon Shaped Pool is ethereal and wonder-inspiring, restrained, ambient, and choral, like an untouchable love.