Photo by Johan Persson via zoonation.co.uk
Message in a Bottle film still
Message in a Bottle
(Mercury Studios 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray)
For Message in a Bottle, Sting rerecorded songs from across his career and handed them for staging on camera to choreographer Kate Prince. Her dancers represent a village in an unnamed any-country (the multiracial cast makes it universal). In early scenes (“Every Little Thing She Does is Magic”), it’s a happy place as the cast reinvent tradition with modern dance and hip-hop gestures. And then lights darken, the tone turns ominous and by the end of “King of Pain,” the dancers carry off the dead. In a seriously reinterpreted “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” figures in black hoods and masks arrive to torment the survivors of an undisclosed conflict. Message in a Bottle contains a message about the crisis of migration from lands that have become unlivable. The emotions of the refugees are expressed through dancers in motion and the creative interpolation of Sting’s familiar songs. (David Luhrssen)
