Eye Candy #484 - "Until the Light Takes Us"

Until the Light Takes Us:  Filmed in the early 2000’s, but not released until 2009, this documentary charts the early years and peak of Norwegian black metal as a genre and its surrounding controversy, as well as several of its “luminaries”.  The film focuses on Gylve “Fenriz” Nagell of Darkthrone and Varg “Count Grishnakh” Vikernes of Burzum and Mayhem.  Vikernes is most notable for serving time in prison for murdering his bandmate Oysten “Euronymous” Aarseth in 1993, as well as a spate of church burnings around the same time.   Aarseth himself was rumored to have made a stew out of the brains another bandmate who committed suicide.   Obviously, this is not your father’s rock-and-roll.  The problems of the film are several - 1.) for a music documentary, there is very little Norwegian black metal in it.  There are snippets here and there, but most of the music is the incidental (and very annoying) electronic score; 2.) it lacks energy.  It plods along for 93 minutes, the least energetic movie about heavy metal you have ever seen; and 3.) the people it showcases aren’t all that remarkable, as musicians or functioning members of society.    There is some uncomfortable hero worship going on, particularly when one of the objects of veneration, Varg, is vocal anti semite aligned with the White power movement (it stems from the fact that he violently reacts to Judeo-Christianity co-opting paganism for its own ends, which it did), not to mention a convicted murdered who stabbed his victim 23 times.  Sure, Varg is well-spoken, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is bat crap crazy.  And it delves only briefly with the evolution of the genre, from misplaced nationalism and the loss of cultural identity on the “mean streets” of Oslo (yes, I‘m being facetious), and their eventual slide into full-on cult/kitsch status.  This could have been better.   Woodchuck sez, “Needs more music.”