Daydreaming

Stick with me, this interpretation is gonna make you shit bricks. See the normal video first and then the reversed, and burn them in your memory. This stuff is heavily symbolic, like pretty much everything Radiohead. Plus, all of this can be viewed as a dream, and dreams are symbolic in their nature.

Notice how everything Thom does, he doesn't stop moving, he keeps on walking: this is him walking through his life, his memories, his problems. He will stop at the Cave, however we will go through this later.

All of this starts with Thom, walking down this tunnel from the outside, from the "white light" along with a stream of other people. This "White Light" symbolizes the Higher Soul, from which Thom and a bunch of other people (you? me?) are separating in order to experience this world. Notice how people are coming from a bright, open, higher ground, into a dark, lower tunnel, thus the "descent" through the "tunnel".

He then passes through some kind of maintenance room. This symbolizes the plans every one of us makes and the options we evaluate before incarnating into a physical body. He then goes on and reaches a hallway with many doors. He is choosing where to go, the life he wants; again, he has evaluated the options and is now choosing.

Thus he's born, and he chose that family. Pretty full of childhood symbolism there. The loving, caring mother doing the laundry, the children playing and studying. A pretty good childhood.

In the next scene when he sees the mother carrying the baby and he chooses to walk away from that, use you subconscious to interpret that. He stops and goes back. It certainly feels like a mistake has been done, or he's undergoing a deviation from the normal path. Citing Wikipedia: "He was born with a paralysed left eye, and underwent five eye operations by the age of six; according to Yorke, the last surgery was "botched", giving him a drooping eyelid." Thus the hospital scene. Notice how the medics are walking casually and not paying any attention to him.

Then normal life stuff happens. A house with a woman reading stuff in the kitchen, photos of people (friends, relatives, symbolizing normal relationships), people doing the laundry, common people doing common life stuff. Then he enters a market where consumeristic stuff is sold. He then (has enough?) walks out through another maintenance area.

Notice how untill now he just walked straight. He was going "sideways", he was experiencing only more of the same. From now on he will be always climbing stairs, thus going "upward", starting his symbolic ascent; he starts to go up during a natural scene and this is also heavily symbolic. Nature symbolizes purity, the original environment where man was at home, the only place one can go to find rest when society becomes unbearable.

Notice also the maintenance areas: I think they symbolize "areas" of one's life in which one starts to "read among the lines", "look beyond the curtains" of what's really going on, when one starts to question things. Notice how these areas are always not crowded, there are one, two, or no people. Very few ask themselves questions, very few walk out of "crowded areas" into "maintenance areas" to see, to know, to understand.

The music changes to reflect new hope, from depressing ("dreamers, they never learn, beyond the point of no return, and it's too late, the damage is done", referring to people ensnared in their illusionary reality) it becomes liberating. He walks up some stairs with pictures of trees.

Notice how everything becomes white, symbol of purity, light. There's people walking in the hallway (the mental hospital in which he worked?), however only Thom is the one who finally steps out into a wonderful beach scenery. Again, notice the whitish tint of nature and the change in music. There's few people there and they're having fun, relaxing. Again, all symbolic.

"This goes beyond me, beyond you": Self explanatory. Who are we when we look at the immensity of reality? Can we really change the stuff that really matters? Can we really understand what is going on? Interesting to note that Thom is singing this while "going up" on the elevator. He also contemplates the "light above", it looks almost like they're communicating. Then the elevator stops. It's not time to go higher right now.

He starts wandering through this parking hall. "The white room by a window, where the sun comes through" This may be a reference to the mental institution, describing one of the numerous depressing scenes that Thom saw while being there. However the "sun comes through the window", so there's always hope.

"We are just happy to serve, just happy to serve you". Having realized the meaninglessness (or the overcomplicated meaning) of Reality, he just surrenders to it, to the Universe, the One, God, call it however you want. Notice the "exit" sign in the parking hall: he's walking in the opposite way because in the not-reversed video his journey is "upwards", he is going somewhere, he is not headed towards the "exit".

More life events unfold, an empty house (solitude?), he leaves his wife (this is reflected in his daughter slamming the door is his face?) more light, a library (he starts searching for knowledge, or simply he sees people wasting their time to get a Ph.D. or other stuff without any inherent meaning), again walking the opposite way of exit signs...

More white nature. Night falls, he crawls inside a cave with a fire in it (dark night of the soul?). The first Half of his life is now over.

Then "Half of my life" repeated 8 times. 8 symbolizes the infinite. Half of my life is reversed. Thom is (not so subtly?) begging you to play this reversed. Look up the ouroboros, the snake biting its tail, symbol of eternity, of the cyclic time; however we got an 8 here. We ony got half of it, the other half we will get when we will reverse this and see where this is going (two 0s make an 8).

And thus half of his life has ended.

But the other half begins.

He wakes up from his slumber, his introspection has come to an end. It's time to wake up: he exits the cave and starts going back, descending, crawling, stumbling along the way. The sun comes up. He descends from the mountain (from isolation on "up high", from deep within).

It's time to go back to his life. This whole videoclip was shot really well, because it is very reversable: when he opened the door to the mountain he had to almost force it open; now the effect is that he closes it with seeming respect and humilty, almost bowing to be thankful for what that place showed him.

He keeps on descending. Notice how he is walking towards the exits signs and doors now. He has completed half of his journey and so he is now headed towards the "exit". Also notice how the violins reflect his illumination and the knowledge he gained through introspection. The same violins indicated the approaching climax in the non-reversed version.

Now what we see are the same scenes in reverse. He comes back, descends from the stairs, the hills, and the elevator (notice how he looks up at the end of this scene in both reversed and un-reversed versions), the girl opens the door (possible reunification with daughter in the future?). However, one by one, he closes every door he opened.

Again, scenes from everyday life with everyday people. He walks among them like before; however, he is different inside...

Also worth noting is that once out of the slumber he is walking backwards. Forced choice because of the reversed video or is there a well thought meaning behind this? Try to "feel" this, try to sense its symbolic meaning with your being.

The last scenes can be interpreted like he becomes old and goes through old age diseases in the hospital, then when everything that could have been done has been done, he is sent home with his family, although this interpretation seems a bit forced. Maybe he's just remembering what he went through during his childhood.

He exits through the same maintenance area he came from. The other half of his journey is complete: he "goes through the tunnel", higher, towards "the Light", along with other souls who also have completed their journey. Thus the cycle is complete: the snake keeps biting its own tail; always has, always will be. Thom fades into the Light, walking backwards, having left everything behind him, while still looking back at his life. Then nothing.