In less than a week, Ariana Grande has racked up 5.6 million views and counting on a new short film she released to her official YouTube channel entitled Brighter Days Ahead. The short film, directed by Christian Breslauer, was released Friday, March 28th in conjunction with the deluxe album release of Eternal Sunshine Deluxe: Brighter Days Ahead that originally made its way onto streaming platforms around the globe last year.
The deluxe version of the album features five new songs and an extended version of a previously released one. The added songs to the track list include: “Intro (End of the World) – Extended”, “Twilight Zone”, “Warm”, “Dandelion”, “Past Life”, and “Hampstead”. Appearing to be inspired by her recent return to acting, the 26-minute short film includes six snippets of songs off the album and turns it into one big storyline rather than releasing six separate traditional music videos.
Reprising her role as Peaches, which references her music video for “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)”, Brighter Days Ahead follows an elderly version of the character reliving her memories from the past in a futuristic facility with a storyline that pays homage to the 2004 Jim Carrey film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It blurs the line between reality and fantasy encompassing a variety of clips including real home videos from Ariana’s childhood, staged performances of songs off the album and fictional depictions of the stories behind the songs, one of which features Ariana Grande’s real-life father, Edward Butera.
As the elderly Peaches watches herself on screen, she recounts each memory with a song or two depicted in the way they felt to her as she was living them. Beginning with “Intro (End of the World)”, she watches a series of home videos of her and her family when she was a little girl. Both “Eternal Sunshine” and “Dandelion” play next as she performs them like she would any other live concert. While the first two memories are drastically different, the last three songs detail a more cohesive story split into two memories that seamlessly fade into each other like a sci-fi movie.
As “Twilight Zone” plays, young Peaches wakes up in a bed wearing a vintage wedding dress and discovers that her house has been turned upside down around her. While wading through the chaos she finds a necklace and puts it on. Suddenly, she hears a crash outside and goes out to investigate. “Twilight Zone” ends as “Supernatural” begins and young Peaches is welcomed with more chaos as she walks through an apocalyptic world. Fires blazing and unsure where to turn in the wreckage, Peaches remains unphased as she surrenders to being beamed up by an alien spaceship.
The memory ends and elderly Peaches chooses to watch the last one which is a black and white scene set in a bar following a disheveled doctor. He looks forlorn as he recounts the memory of giving his daughter the necklace she put on earlier in the film and is unable to bring himself to play the piano at the bar. As he leaves, “Hampstead” begins to play and the viewer discovers he has been collecting body parts to try to heal his daughter, Peaches, who was killed by stray cats (a reference to Ariana’s “The Boy is Mine” music video). To no avail, he destroys his operating room out of anger before realizing his daughter began to show signs of life when she heard music from a music box. He decides he must play the piano again and to his amazement she is brought back to life while the scene’s color is restored.
Before the film’s credits roll, elderly Peaches appears as if something is healed within her and the viewer is shown one last home video of a young Ariana saying, “You know someone has said that we should live each day as if it were the last day of our life.”
Although the connection of these drastically different fictional memories may seem unclear at first, they all are related to healing Ariana’s real past and present.
Like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the story of a tumultuous romantic relationship, fans have speculated that the songs featured in Brighter Days Ahead tell the story of Ariana Grande’s public divorce from Dalton Gomez as well as her newest romance with Wicked cast mate, Ethan Slater. In addition to shedding light on the relationship drama the internet can’t stop talking about, the short film delves deep into Ariana’s relationship with her family and herself.
As a long time Ariana Grande fan, it was touching to imagine Ariana healing parts of herself through this short film. The first fictional memory was also a collection of real memories that felt like a re-connection with her inner child and a longing for the type of innocent love a kid learns from their family first. However, as she moves to the second fictional memories of herself performing, it’s a very different Ariana that we see. Her appearance change shows the pop persona she puts on that ultimately severs the relationship to her inner child and causes her complicated relationship with fame. Although it seems she doesn’t regret it in the end with the choice to depict Peaches bopping along to Eternal Sunshine with the rest of us.
The third fictional memory marks where the alleged story of her relationship to Dalton ends and her relationship to Ethan begins. Everything around her is visibly falling apart in the short film in relation to how it felt when she got a divorce in real life. Despite feeling like the world was ending, she surrenders to the chaos and lets herself fall in love again anyway because if the world truly was ending, she would want to be in a relationship that felt authentic even if it meant blowing up her life in the process.
Lastly, it is well known by long time Ariana Grande fans that her parents divorced when she was young and she had a strained relationship with her father for a long time. Seeing Ariana’s dad cameo as the doctor that healed Peaches through their shared love of music in the last fictional memory felt like Ariana re-connecting with her dad in real life from a place of understanding after the pain she experienced. Similarly to the conclusion she comes to by the end of the other memories, she doesn’t regret the bad or the good because ultimately they brought her to the version of herself she is now that has a better relationship with her dad (and herself).
While the lyrics to many of the added songs on Eternal Sunshine Deluxe: Brighter Days Ahead read more like diary entries than well-crafted songs, it’s hard to care when the singer is as vocally talented as Ariana Grande. Brighter Days Ahead had a well thought out premise, clear references from iconic movies like War of the Worlds and Titanic, as well as a budget that allowed it to be executed incredibly well. If music videos are dead, maybe short films will take their place because this one was so good. Thank you, next miss Ariana Grande.