Wes Anderson is, at this point, more of a recognizable brand than most actual brands. Thus, his newly released surprise short film for H&M is staunchly in keeping with the director’s style — a surprisingly dynamic (if now very redundant) use of antiquity fetish coupled with single takes panning across various diorama-y chambers with delightful color schemes and perfectly positioned actors. That style now just so happens to be applied to a fast fashion company with a casually stylish bent and a history of labor exploitation controversies.
The video itself is something of a combination of The Darjeeling Limited (Adrien Brody is on a charmingly old-school train, here as a certain Conductor Ralph) and Snowpiercer (due to heavy snow, that old-school train, Conductor Ralph announces, will be stuck on a much longer journey than expected, and from there Ralph begins creating an imitation of the outside world in one of the train cars.)
The short film is titled “Come Together,” and sees Brody announcing that people’s Christmas plans may be stymied due to the delays, and thereby throwing together a winter wonderland/Christmas celebration in one of his train-cars, at which point people indeed come together from within their respective bunks and the viewer then presumably feels they really need an H&M sweater.
As Indiewire points out, Anderson has also made promotional shorts/commercials for AT&T, Hyundai, Stella Artois, American Express, SoftBank, and Prada.
Watch the new short: