Black Metal and the Fate of Civility

#9: Until the Light Takes Us

This documentary chronicles the rise and fall of the Norwegian Black Metal movement of the late 1980's and early 1990's; the period when the movement went from an underground collection of outsider musicians with a thing for indigenous culture and against the "Jewish cult" Christianity to a violent public caricature of church-burning satanists. This was a musical and cultural movement centered on a rejection of consumer culture, popular music and, apparently, the influence of American forms and values in Norway. Like the demise of Grunge in the U.S., a number of the stars are dead, apparently the most charismatic of them a Swede (who adopted the name "Dead") and shot himself in the head with his own shotgun. Some are in prison, and others are just confused and angry that their personal movement turned into a commercial enterprise only to be digested, sold and then crapped out into mainstream culture. One difference, which may be telling, is that the photos of Dead's suicide ended up as the cover of his band's next album.

All in all, this is a pretty pedestrian documentary that could be made about nearly any deviant cultural movement that blasted into the popular culture, indulged in the worst of its own excesses, and then flamed out in a orgy of suicide, murder, arrests, and acrimony.

What was remarkable about this film was the experience of watching it. When I got to the theater there was a snaking line of people dressed in black. I was pretty sure they weren't there for the screening of The Fantastic Mr. Fox. This was, without a doubt, the most polite line I've ever been in. There were two guys behind me in the line to purchase tickets who had bought their tickets earlier in the day. I told them this was the line for people buying tickets but they stood in line anyway because they didn't want to "cut ahead." Wow.

The theater was sold out. People moved around so that late arriving groups could sit together. When the lights went down the crowd fell silent and for the next hour and 30 minutes no cell phones went off, nobody was texting, nobody was chatting, confused about the plot, or driven to deconstruct the film during the film. The movie was only average but I intend to go to films that attract death-metal heads from now on.

BTW, the maximum sentence for murder in Norway is 21 years and they are spent in what are basically dorms decorated by Ikea? Wow.