Sia released her official video for ‘’Elastic Heart’’, single belonging to her 1000 Forms of Fear LP, considered by Rolling Stone part of the Top 20 Pop Albums of 2014. The video appears to be a ‘’quasi-sequel’’ of Sia’s March-released ‘’Chandelier’’ and continues the collaboration with child prodigy dancer Maggie Ziegler. As bonus, actor Shia LaBeouf also appears in the dramatic video.
The two characters of the video, Maggie Ziegler and Transformers actor Shia LaBeouf, are filmed inside a birdcage the size of a studio room and they portray the entrapped souls carrying a fight with themselves, and with each other in order to reach freedom. The scenery is entirely symbolic, with the cage as main important element in the setting, representing the multiple barriers the human soul must surpass in order to reach serenity. The so-called ‘’battle’’ for release of the two characters is also symbolic, as the performers express their feeling, emotions, anguishes and desires through interpretative dance.
Both Maggie Ziegler and Shia LaBeouf are symbolic characters, envisaging the primordial human being, with its sentiments uneducated and explosive. Every gesture is a cry for help, although the actors use no words to express their inner fears. It seems that the initiator in the couple is the young child who efforts to teach the grown-up male a way out of the cage. In the end, LaBeouf’s heart does not prove to be so elastic, as his ways of trying to escape are limited, undetermined and reckless, as he eventually remains in the inside perimeter of the trap.
The ‘’Elastic Heart’’ video was directed by Sia herself and Daniel Askill, which proves that the symbolic experience in the video might origin in a life struggle of the artist and that the words ‘’ You did not break me/ I’m still fighting for peace’’ attribute directly to the singer. The Maggie Ziegler and Shia LaBeouf couple interpret though dance the thoughts sang by the artist, the symbolic cage being a predominant Form of Fear.