The Odyssey of Cartier or A Leopard Gets Around

March 11, 2012 7:32 AM

Cartier has decided to celebrate its 165 years in business by taking two years to produce an incredible short film.
posted by Atreides (54 comments total)

The world would be such a better place if all the diamonds turned into leopards. Well, apart from the initial millions of leopard attacks. And all the poor leopards stuck in the ground.

OK, scratch that, it was a bad idea.
posted by Philosopher Dirtbike at 7:45 AM on March 11, 2012 [11 favorites]

I was all set to make some snarky pepsi/cartier blue comment, but this is actually pretty good.
posted by HuronBob at 7:47 AM on March 11, 2012

If there was a network called The Leopard Channel that just featured 24 hours a day of leopards (and maybe jaguars and cheetahs, too) walking around, jumping, pouncing, curling up for a nap, cleaning themselves, etc. I would watch a lot of that network.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:49 AM on March 11, 2012 [2 favorites]

Gorgeous!

If I may, an alternate ending:

The leopard walks into the cloudy room and makes eye contact with the beautiful lady in the red dress. He approaches timidly, and she reaches out her jeweled hand. In a deft and minute shift, the leopard bites off her hand and lower arm BECAUSE HE'S A FUCKING LEOPARD.

Shot of the floor: fallen jewels in a growing pool of red. Written over it, in shining cursive:

"Blood Diamonds since 1847."
posted by farishta at 7:50 AM on March 11, 2012 [41 favorites]

Beautiful film, but the poor onça must be cold in all that snow!
posted by Tom-B at 7:51 AM on March 11, 2012

I kind of zoned out while watching the news this morning after this started and came back two minutes later and was like, "What the hell? Is this still the same commercial?"
posted by XMLicious at 8:11 AM on March 11, 2012 [4 favorites]

Was anyone else reminded of this?
posted by Think_Long at 8:13 AM on March 11, 2012 [8 favorites]

This had me going. I thought there was going to be some kind of payoff at the end, making a story out of it somehow. But no, I just watched a three minute long commercial. For diamonds.
posted by JaredSeth at 8:18 AM on March 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

"Was anyone else reminded of this ?"

No.
posted by HuronBob at 8:18 AM on March 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

By the end of it my lips were curled in an almost painful rictus of disgust about basically everything from bad compositing and CG integration, the asstastic editing and a bullshit soundtrack to the myriad and multitudinous embedded overloads and assumptions about wealth, ownership, propriety and consumerism, as well as from every single bit and level of society that exists in order to perpetuate the grotesque misuse of human capital from the miners on up to every single bit of subconcious reptilian impulse that drives our need for this crap to every psychologist and marketing manipulation trick that makes developing and delivery just such an appeal so effective.

No sir, I didn't like it.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:19 AM on March 11, 2012 [20 favorites]

165 years!!!!!! and two years for making a short film. It is gonna be incredible for sure.

I guess it worked. I kept looking at my watch.
posted by hal9k at 8:26 AM on March 11, 2012 [9 favorites]

Don't do it, leopard! That woman is going to be REALLY high maintenance as a partner.
posted by thelonius at 8:27 AM on March 11, 2012 [5 favorites]

Insertion of the Chinese dragon for Chinese consumers was a bit jarring
posted by Bwithh at 8:37 AM on March 11, 2012 [6 favorites]

Well, that was OPULENT.
posted by Ron Thanagar at 8:41 AM on March 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

Sigh. Cariter, go look at what Hermes' is doing. Thats how you bring an actual luxury brand into the new century without looking desperate. Cariter doesn't beg, okay? This looks like begging.
posted by The Whelk at 8:57 AM on March 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

Three and a half minutes of leopards jumping through hoops, dragons turning into walls, old-timey airplanes and elephants with buildings on their backs, just to learn that 'Cartier' doesn't rhyme with 'fartier partier.'

Next time, I'll just watch the trailer for 'Disney's African Cats.'
posted by box at 9:00 AM on March 11, 2012

I kind of had three thoughts at the same time:

a) This is very pretty

b) Essentially, this is a diamond commercial, and anything to do with diamonds kind of squicks me out, especially since I'm a woman and everyone keeps telling me how much I want the overpriced, violence-causing things

c) OH MY GOD I WANNA PET THE LEOPARD! Where is my pet leopard?
posted by Nibbly Fang at 9:02 AM on March 11, 2012 [3 favorites]

I mean, you want to sponsor a short film about your product? Go ask Dior how they did it.
posted by The Whelk at 9:03 AM on March 11, 2012

Was anyone else reminded of this?

I'm a little perplexed that you weren't linking to this.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:05 AM on March 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

Or Vuitton! See how these are interesting independent of the product and feature up front the creator's sensibility and don't look slapped together despite the two years lead time?
posted by The Whelk at 9:06 AM on March 11, 2012

I mean, you want to sponsor a short film about your product? Go ask Dior how they did it .

That's cheating, they hired one of the few David Lynches left in the world.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:21 AM on March 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

They would have better off going in an even more abstract direction as. I can't think of any kind of concrete narrative that wouldn't piss off a major customer group.
posted by The Whelk at 9:24 AM on March 11, 2012

c) OH MY GOD I WANNA PET THE LEOPARD! Where is my pet leopard?

Would one of these or maybe these be close enough?
posted by radwolf76 at 9:31 AM on March 11, 2012

MetaFilter: My lips were curled in an almost painful rictus of disgust about basically everything
posted by Scoo at 9:33 AM on March 11, 2012 [7 favorites]

I liked it.
posted by shivohum at 9:49 AM on March 11, 2012

1. Very pretty!

2. I liked the payoff early on, when the begemmed leopard shrugged off the diamond encrustation like so much cheap glass that shivered and splintered and crashed to the floor useless, because that's basically how I see diamonds.

3. Chinese dragon was a cool effect, as was the city on the elephant. Both give me ideas for my next D&D campaign...
posted by darkstar at 10:32 AM on March 11, 2012

The guy in the plane (the 14-Bis) is Santos-Dumont.

In 1904, while celebrating his winning of the Deutsch Prize at Maxim's Restaurant in Paris, Santos-Dumont complained to his friend Louis Cartier about the difficulty of checking his pocket watch to time his performance during flight. Santos-Dumont then asked Cartier to come up with an alternative that would allow him to keep both hands on the controls. Cartier went to work on the problem and the result was a watch with a leather band and a small buckle, to be worn on the wrist.
posted by TheGoodBlood at 10:32 AM on March 11, 2012 [7 favorites]

Well, I'm clearly not part of their target demographic.
posted by benito.strauss at 10:41 AM on March 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

Stunning, but what was their hurry? These are shots to linger over, not get over with ASAP for something else

I blame Gen X and their culture of instant gratification.
posted by IndigoJones at 10:48 AM on March 11, 2012

great.. it was full of their own design motifs
posted by the mad poster! at 11:08 AM on March 11, 2012

That was really, really silly.
posted by blue t-shirt at 11:09 AM on March 11, 2012 [2 favorites]

If corporations are persons then we just watched one jack it to a lusty climax.
posted by fleetmouse at 11:23 AM on March 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

The Taj Mahalephant was the coolest part.

I will never ever understand jewelry. Unless it is One Eyed Willy richstuff size gems. Those I can get behind.
posted by ian1977 at 12:03 PM on March 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

It took two years to make that commercial?
posted by pracowity at 1:00 PM on March 11, 2012

I much prefer the subtlety of the diamond retailers' ads you see driving through Texas, like: "Do you have the STONES to propose?"
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 1:02 PM on March 11, 2012 [3 favorites]

Next time they could really splurge on a few shots that last longer than a second.
posted by Casuistry at 1:34 PM on March 11, 2012

It could have been a lot more tasteful and in tune with reality, even if the end goal is to sell your brand. I mean, exoticization of India and China? I thought we'd moved beyond that by now.
posted by polymodus at 2:09 PM on March 11, 2012

I got to the aid through another trusted channel. I was sorely disappointed and very disgusted by the video itself. However, it took the uncritical mesmerization of the YouTube commenters to pull this out of me:

This commercial is an opportunity at self-aggrandizement as any other. Its opulence is a mask for the hollow aspirations of the bourgeoisie and the fawning adulation of its audience is a contemptible self-deception.

The two YouTube replies that comment received both told me to fuck off.

Made. My. Day.
posted by mistersquid at 2:27 PM on March 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

I thought bits of it were quite pretty. But two years?
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:54 PM on March 11, 2012

I love beautiful things and this video is beautiful, as are Cartier designs. Beautiful, elegant, fabulous and full of historical significance and opulence. The history of the wristwatch began to meet the needs of a pilot friend of Cartier. The world's smallest wristwatch was a gift of Cartier to the then Princess Elizabeth of the UK. Cartier as well as Faberge was jeweler to the Tsar. Of course the Romanovs were gunned down but many of their Cartier pieces remain. Cartier designed exquisite Edwardian jewelry and was a favorite of Queen Alexandra, an indefatigable collector. Cartier added opulence to the Delhi Durbar and made jewelry for the King of Siam.

In more recent times, Evelyn Walsh McLean is sadly dead and gone but the Hope Diamond remains and in the Smithsonian and thousands file by to look at it in the gallery there, It really is blue and beautiful but not as beautiful to my eye as the pink, yellow, green and blue fancy diamonds that flank it in little windows nearby.

The Cartier diamond bought by Richard Burton, now deceased, for the late Elizabeth Taylor, remains. Much of the Cartier Art Deco collection is forever on display in the film The Great Gatsby. The Duchess of Windsor's diamond panther curled around a cushion sapphire remains, now in the Cartier Collection. Cartier's animals, insects and birds still shine and glitter, their wings tremble and they still adorn wherever they are displayed. You can still watch and listen as Marilyn Monroe honors Cartier as purveyor of a girl's best friend. The film remains.

These things exist and I would no more seek to destroy them than I would light a bonfire of books. However politically incorrect the medium, or distasteful the class of Cartier's patrons, still the craftsmanship, excellence, elegance--these are worth having in the world. If there is no love for the buyers or even the sellers, at least there must be respect for the makers, the artists of such beauty. When we man the barricades, I would not want to set such beauty to the torch just because it is a symbol of wealth and class.
posted by Anitanola at 3:31 PM on March 11, 2012 [17 favorites]

I saw this yesterday in a movie theatre as one of the ads before the previews. I kept waiting for the dragon and the leopard to end up enjoying a frosty Stella Artois, but it never happened.
posted by CosmicRayCharles at 5:11 PM on March 11, 2012

This a thinly disguised ad aimed at newly rich people in Russia, China and India.

It is interesting that America doesn't appear on this radar.
posted by bru at 5:31 PM on March 11, 2012 [4 favorites]

Don't worry, we're next, as soon as our elites can figure out how to fully hollow out and privatize the US economy.
posted by wuwei at 6:03 PM on March 11, 2012

Not so taken with this ad from Bruno Aveillan but his Samsung Galaxy 'Epic' was pretty sweet.
posted by unliteral at 6:46 PM on March 11, 2012

I want the red dress the woman in the last scene is wearing. Umph. ♥

Otherwise, well, my most interesting thoughts were "Cartier. We sell bling."
posted by egypturnash at 7:12 PM on March 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

Scintillating advertisement, let down a little by the music.
The artist is representing the fragility of living suspended in such beauty that cannot possibly be maintained, that all jewels, are a frozen curse, and they represent the farthest reach across the chasm, before the fall.
posted by niccolo at 7:36 PM on March 11, 2012

They did the thing where they aired this nearly simultaneously on CBS (which ran about a minute ahead), ABC, and NBC the other night. (Monday maybe?) It was really odd, since it's super long nad not very good.
posted by maryr at 8:31 PM on March 11, 2012

Anitanola says it best.
posted by roboton666 at 11:43 PM on March 11, 2012 [2 favorites]

This a thinly disguised ad aimed at newly rich people in Russia, China and India.

It is interesting that America doesn't appear on this radar.

The film is actually referencing Cartier's past, the markets where they made inroads and many of their iconic designs. Cartier was long the jeweler of choice for both European and Eastern royalty, as well as the newly rich in the West.
posted by ersatzkat at 6:28 AM on March 12, 2012

The world would be such a better place if all the diamonds turned into leopards. Well, apart from the initial millions of leopard attacks.

Can't sleep, diamonds will eat me.
posted by psoas at 8:43 AM on March 12, 2012

FAAAAAAAAAAAABULOUS!!!!!
posted by Hanuman1960 at 10:41 AM on March 12, 2012

Here kitty, kitty, kitty.
posted by Goofyy at 10:50 AM on March 12, 2012

It never really occurred to me to destroy such objects of power. It's the same dilemma as with conflict diamonds, except the societal cost is not as explicit as with death and suffering.

As with all dilemmas, your choice says more about you than about how things should be.
posted by polymodus at 1:47 PM on March 12, 2012

I was hoping the little leopard ran into Hugo (Cabret, not Boss) at Gare du Nord.
posted by obscurator at 8:51 AM on March 13, 2012