Synopsis

The video recasts Arcade Fire's somber song as a western tale of pursuit, violence, and reckoning. Edited from Sergio Leone's 1968 film Once Upon a Time in the West, it follows the confrontation between Charles Bronson's harmonica-playing drifter and Henry Fonda's cold-blooded gunman. Stark landscapes, lingering close-ups, train imagery, and the final showdown give the song's themes of confinement, fear, and release a cinematic narrative, turning an introspective track into a story of vengeance and redemption.

Factoids & Trivia

• Rather than featuring Arcade Fire performing, the video is a fan-made edit built entirely from footage from Once Upon a Time in the West.

• The song's lyrics and the western's visual language align unusually well: the film's characters appear trapped by violence and fate, while the music gradually moves toward emotional and physical liberation.

• The edit became popular online in 2007 and attracted the attention of Arcade Fire's camp. The band subsequently received permission to share it through its official website, helping give a fan production an unusually prominent place in the group's video history.

• The film footage centers on the performances of Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda, whose opposing roles provide the video's central dramatic tension.

• "My Body Is a Cage" closes Arcade Fire's 2007 album Neon Bible. The album was largely recorded in a converted church in Quebec, and the track's monumental pipe-organ sound came from that setting.

• Win Butler said that the basic performances for "My Body Is a Cage" and "Intervention" were recorded live in a church. The reverberant space and organ became essential parts of the song's unusually imposing atmosphere.

• The track also gained wider exposure after being used in promotion for the 2008 film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.