Directed By Aaron Aites & Audrey Ewell
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1014809/
"Until the Light Takes Us" is an icy, occasionally engaging look at the founding members, most of them Norwegian, of the "black metal" movement, an internationally known musical genre that might be Scandinavia's most significant cultural export of the past 20 years.
This is problematic for mainstream Scandinavia, since black metal is the abrasive music of a youth counterculture feeding off misanthropy, defiance and violent disdain for Christianity, globalization and anything else that might diminish old Viking beliefs and traditions. But whatever you think of them, don't call these guys Satanists. That really makes them mad.
Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell's documentary has a feel for the place that produces this phenomenon: long stretches of cold and dusk, stilted and liberally conformist. The desire to shock in this setting is understandable. But it's trickier to know why some of these young men, some from idyllic upbringings, developed a taste for activities ranging from onstage mutilation to a gleeful photo shoot of a band member's gruesome suicide scene, all the way to murder and setting fire to centuries-old churches. Long on atmosphere and short on context, the film dances around whatever points it wants to make, sticking solely to the players' points of view.
Part of the problem is an over-reliance on two people. One, Gylve Nagell of the band Darkthrone, was there at black metal's beginnings and appears to be a spokesman of sorts today. But he's not very interesting and his significance is left unexplained. More interesting in a comically deluded way is Varg Vikernes of Burzum, an arsonist and murderer who from prison (he was recently released) indignantly and pompously bemoans how his principled acts of protest have been interpreted as merely the work of the devil. Poor guy.
Overall Rating ( * * * )
Mr. What?
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