Justin Timberlake just released his long-awaited third album, The 20/20 Experience, and to celebrate, he has premiered an epic, eight-minute music video that celebrates the epic, decades-spanning love story of his beloved maternal grandparents, William and Sadie Bomar.
JT's touching, tear-jerking "Mirrors" video, directed by Floria Sigismondi, begins with a sad-eyed, silver-haired actress boxing up a man's belongings while he stands behind her, ghostlike; the implication is her husband has passed away. The real-life William, who inspired the name of Justin's clothing line William Rast, died on December 29 last year, after a long battle with heart trouble and dementia. His health problems prevented the couple from traveling to Italy to attend their grandson's wedding to Jessica Biel last October; the groom, however, had slices of wedding cake flown 5,000 miles to their home in Tennessee. A later scene in the "Mirrors" video, when the fictional Sadie's wedding ring falls off and her grandson deftly catches it, hints at Justin's intention to carry on the Bomars' legacy and hopefully enjoy a union with his new bride that's as loving and successful as the one his grandparents shared for 63 years.
Justin with the real-life Bill and Sadie in 2007 [photo: L. Busacca/WireImage]But before that moment, the "Mirrors" video hops from sweet scenes of the actors portraying the elderly couple merrily dancing in their bedroom, to flashbacks of their carefree bobby-socks courtship in the 1950s and a rough marital patch in the '60s, to lump-throated scenes of the widowed Sadie living with her husband's ghost and still mirroring his moves. It's an extremely haunting clip that warrants multiple viewings--preferably with a box of extra-ply tissues at the ready.
Justin himself doesn't even appear in the video until the 5:45 mark, when the song segues into its coda, but that's just fine--Bill and Sadie Bomar are the real stars of "Mirrors." We have a feeling Justin will be paying tribute to his grandparents again at this year's MTV Video Music Awards, when he thanks them in his acceptance speeches--because this stunning mini-movie is sure to win a few Moonmen.
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