The video is filled with many abstract shots, which don't really make sense or form any kind of narrative when taken plainly. You need to actively choose to look more in depth at the imagery to decipher possible meanings - and even then, there are many different possible routes you can take to deciding what the video means. There is also a lot of performance in the video. It was something that Nirvana was perhaps known for in periods of his career, something that carried over to his videos - something that is synonymous with the rock genre in music videos.
At the beginning of the video, there is a gun floating in the water, sinking. This denotes that the gun has been discarded, and is now possibly unusable. The obvious connotation to take from the shots would be that the singer/ character singing in the video is forgiving towards someone who has wronged him, and is willing to throw away his anger (the gun), and this would also match with the lyrics towards the end of the song 'No I don't have a gun'. However, I would analyse this to be a ruse. There is too much hesitation and contradicting lines in the lyrics of the song to take the shot at face value.
I would take a view that the gun floating in the water is to lure the one who has wronged - back to a vulnerable position for possible revenge. Nonetheless, the gun is important in holding the interests of an audience - such a violent prop in the mise-en-scene raises interests for what exactly its purpose is - usually it is to kill.
Later in the video, there is shown a dog limping with a neck collar brace on. As I mentioned before, there are so many different possible readings you can take from the video. Mine is that the dog symbolises the pain and hurt that has been caused to the singer. If you take this connotation, it leads you to believe there isn't much reason for the singer to forgive the one who wronged him in the past, as he has still kept hold of the injury. Dogs - like other animals, are also held to importance by many families in the western world who keep them as pets. Seeing a possibly distressed dog is upsetting and raises a stir among many audiences, which might have the effect of intriguing them to see what else happens in the video.
It is by this point that you start to notice that most transitions are via cross fades rather than fast paced short cuts. This matches with the (at times) slow tempo of the song to make it aesthetically pleasing and conventionally consistent in its pacing. Slow pacing is also less excitable and often allows more time for reflection on what is happening.
Several times in the video, you see the quite frantic mise-en-scene of Kurt Cobain holding/ dangling onto a chandelier as it rocks across a hall. Such eccentric imagery can appear to be quite menacing and frightening if you compare them to the often welcoming lyrics. You could say that the swinging on the chandelier connotes that the singer is not mentally stable or as welcoming and calm as some of the lyrics make him out to be. This would interest audiences as they would want to find out what his intentions are, or whether he does anything else that they would consider to be frantic within the video.
There are quite a few close-ups on a twitching eye in the video, looking up, down, side to side - in quite a hysterical manner. This reinforces my previous point in denoting that there is something off about the sincerity and calmness of the lyrics in the video. The representations in the video aren't welcoming, indeed they're actually quite agitated, wild and panicky. This could have been done in the video in the hope of grabbing the audience's attention as to why it is so anxious. Perhaps this would lead to audiences analysing the video and song in more depth than they had previously intended to.
Once again adding to the notion that there is a lack of transparency, there are several scenes where a small waterfall is used in front of band members' faces, blurring and concealing their features to some extent. This, mixed with the low key lighting to create darkness and awkward top lighting, makes it very hard to get a picture of what is actually going on besides band members playing instruments. The sharp It makes you 1.) focus on what is happening to a greater extent in the hope of uncovering a mise-en-scene, and 2.) wonder if the person being sung to is being tricked into a false sense of security, as the band members aren't being completely transparent or visible as they sing to you. It makes you untrusting, particularly when the music playing has just gotten sharper, louder and more violent as a guitar solo starts and Kurt sings 'I don't have a gun'. Oh don't you?
There are a few particular scenes, one used as Nirvana's album cover in fact, which seem out of place with my idea and outlook so far in the video. One of these scenes is a low angle shot of a baby swimming through a, appearing to swim after a dollar as it is pulled along the surface. The origin of this is Kurt Cobain's belief that we are taught to chase after money the day that we are born. It's hard to fit that belief into my theory so far on the song and video, or into the video in a way which really matches anything else at all.
One idea I have is that the baby represents the person the singer is talking to. The baby is helpless as it is tricked by the dollar on a hook, swimming after it as if swimming into a trap. What it does do, is match the quirky attitude of the music video. Maybe it was just put in because it looked good and Cobain liked the 'chase after money' idea, and has no other relation to the rest of the video.
The other scenes are the ones which have biology imagery. (Are these called extreme extreme extreme close ups?) They look at cells as they multiple at an incredible rate, and another at a living organism in its embryotic stages. Other than the connection that it makes for a frantic and out of control mise-en-scene, I can't make a connection to the video. Scenes like these are ones that I hope to avoid in my own music video.
Things can be abstract and things can be deeper than face value, but I don't want anything to be unexplainable to the average audience member.
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