FILM REVIEW
Until The Light Takes Us
Chuck Bewilder
Issue date: 2/1/10 Section: Entertainment
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by Chuck Bewilder
where: SPACE gallery
January 28th, 2010
7:30pm
From the cold and distant world of Norway, an honest and raw documentary of the movement called black metal rolled into independent theaters in the United States this winter.
Directors Aaron Aites & Audrey Ewell fell upon black metal a few years ago and were surprisingly seized by the music's "complexity of math or prog rock" and relevance. Moving from San Francisco to Norway, the pair filmed for two years and structured a stunning, objective piece which examines the short history of black metal's origins to its fall and development into an infamous and commercial movement.
Black metal rose in Norway as a musical exploration of the wretched emotional void the artists discovered in their cold, isolated and rapidly-Americanizing culture. The lyrics, chord structures and drum-beats which came forth were philosophical, heavy, and searing. The men behind it never intended to reach beyond others who felt similarly, but with a rush of church burnings in the early nineties, black metal was revealed by the media as a satanic and terrible youth revolt.
The directors wrote, "In telling this story we were able to examine a mechanism of modern life that is invisible, yet which has a great hand in shaping our understanding of ourselves and society: the mechanism by which reality is created, recreated, re-contextualized, whereby a historical idea of something or even someone is irrevocably modified by popular perception. The idea that a myth, if repeated often enough and by enough people, becomes the foundation for the new reality - and forever erases the truth that used to stand in its place."
As a film which is powerful as it is intellectual, 'Until the Light Takes Us' gives the audience a view of black metal through its forefathers, media reports, and current artistic interpretations and allows for an impartial decision on what this music is.
What we see is a relevant and necessary piece of cinema, emotional in its depiction, emotionless in its brutality and validity. This documentary has been delivered in a way that appeals to the metalhead and academic, philosopher and headbanger.
With Generation X left behind us, what are the youth of today?
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