Swift releases “All Too Well (10-Minute Version)” short film
Taylor Swift fans won this weekend with not only the re-release of Swift’s album “Red (Taylor’s Version),” but also with the 10-minute short film for “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version),” the fifth track on the album. The song finds Swift recalling memories of a tumultuous past relationship. Many speculate this relationship is in reference to hers with Jake Gyllenhaal.
On Nov. 5, Swift originally teased the short film—that she wrote and directed—for “All Too Well” on her Instagram, with a brief clip of autumn-hued trees and a car driving down a quiet road. The short film focuses on what went wrong in a couple’s relationship. The couple, respectively named “Him” and “Her,” are portrayed by “Stranger Things” actress Sadie Sink and “Teen Wolf” actor Dylan O’Brien.
The film is split into seven segments, titled “An Upstate Escape,” “The First Crack in the Glass,” “Are You Real?,” “The Breaking Point,” “The Reeling,” “The Remembering” and “Thirteen Years Gone.” In the end, Swift plays a grown-up version of Sink’s character, who gives a reading of her debut novel “All Too Well” in a bookstore while O’Brien’s character watches from outside.
Fans have speculated the song is about “Spider-Man: Far From Home” actor Gyllenhaal. The two dated for three months in late 2010 until their break-up in January 2011; Swift had just turned 21 and Gyllenhaal was 30. “All Too Well’s” extended lyrics paint him in an unflattering light. Swift brings up the incident of him skipping her 21st birthday and even a jab at the age gap in his other relationships after her.
“You said if we had been closer in age, maybe it would have been fine, and that made me want to die,” Swift sings, further twisting the knife with the lyric, “I was never good at telling jokes, but the punchline goes, ‘I’ll get older, but your lovers stay my age.’” Gyllenhaal, now 40, is currently dating 25-year-old model Jeanne Cadieu.
You can watch the short film on YouTube.