Spike Jonze and Arcade Fire have now been joined in holy hipster matrimony. The quirky filmmaker has teamed up with the indie band to make a short film surrounding the recent Grammy-winning album The Suburbs. The Brothers Butler helped Jonze out on the writing of the 30-minute flick, which appears to concern the invasion of a quiet suburb by a totalitarian regime. Not quite the plot I gleaned from the record itself, but sure. Spike Jonze made Being John Malkovich. Spike Jonze can do whatever the hell he wants.

 

Besides, the edge between the mundane and the horrifying is where Jonze does his best work. And what better setting for that tension than middle American suburbia? Those sun-bleached rows of identical houses contain kids who, after a certain age, begin to thirst for so much more than the comfort of their surroundings. They leave for the cities, where there's danger and energy and a chance to cultivate an identity beyond that of just another white American teenager.

 

You'll never see a military invasion of white upper-middle-class America, but it would at least shake things up a bit. Maybe it's what all those kids are secretly yearning for--something to fight about, something that makes it worth it to die. It's the ultimate answer to a suburban summer's endless ennui.

 

Check out the trailer for Scenes from the Suburbs below.