Jeremy Renner Music Video, ‘Wait’ Review: Love, Suffering and Recovery [SFF 25]
We often underestimate the power of music, not just in the poetry the lyrics often contain within the rhythmic flow that they carry, but even within the story. Every song in a sense is a story, and director Evan Hara’s Wait tells a remarkable story. It no secret now that a little over two and a half years ago, on On January 1, 2023, the actor and recent author Jeremy Renner “My Next Breath: A Memoir” suffered a horrific near fatal accident where in saving his Nephew, Renner ended up being run over a Snowcat snowplow, weighing in at over 14,330 pounds. The severity of this incident resulted in Renner being hospitalized with blunt chest trauma and 38 broken bones. After just 16 days of hospitalization and the incredible work from the doctors and staff at the Renown Regional Medical Center’s intensive care unit, Renner was able to return home to complete the remainder of his recovery process, which he himself has gone on to say “I had to accept it for the rest of my life. There'll be nothing normal or as it was prior to the accident,” He’s also further elaborated that "Recovery will be until I'm out of this old hot mess of a body. It was a way for me to really accept that it is going to be forever.”
As much as Evan Hara’s Wait could’ve focused on Renner and the trauma of what was without question a horrific accident that just by the sheer description of its brutality seemed something unlikely for anyone to survive, instead he chose to center the narrative of the music video on that of Renner’s relationship and bond with that of his daughter Ava, whom he welcomed into his life in January of 2013. Watching Wait isn’t just enlightening in how it beautifully showcases the purity of a father’s bond with his daughter. It further succeeds in using the trauma of Renner’s accident as a background aesthetic drop that although never mentioned, can still be felt in the joy Jeremy Renner’s singing conveys in expressing the weight and the strength that his daughter’s existence serves to him both in the best and most difficult moments of his life. The lyrics sung by Renner invoke a touching representation of how we as human beings can draw strength from the people closest to us, while equally acknowledging our own limitations. Another element that Wait highlights is how Renner acknowledges his own short comings as a human being and how despite his daughter being young, the music video illustrates Ava’s innocence not simply as a reminder of the curious purity we all used to embody as children, but as a teacher in the sense that it can still help us learn through the process of life and how even in the darkest moments, so long as we forfeit the idea of giving up as an option, the rest is just a process.
In the process of Jeremy Renner’s incredible recovery, he’s returned to acting in hits like Taylor Sheridan’s Mayor Of Kingstown and Rian Johnson’s second Knives Out sequel Wake Up Dead Man. Renner has also gone on to appear on some of the current top podcasts of the present day such as Joe Rogan’s The Joe Rogan Experience and Chris Williamson’s Modern Wisdom while promoting both his recent book “My Next Breath: A Memoir” and his foundation the RennerVation Foundation.
The RennerVation Foundation was established in order to provide well grounded and compassionate support to foster care and at-risk youth. It offers them a safe haven and targeted programs to develop their skills, confidence, and the sorts of opportunity’s men of great character like Renner have demonstrated. But if there’s a focal lesson to be derived from a music video like Wait, it is how a great character doesn’t just come to anyone. It takes both suffering, as well as the love of those closest to us to help us get back to using our own “hot mess of a body.”