In the early 90’s, Norway experienced the sort of antics middle-America feared for years, but never actually experienced – a bunch of long haired youth, dressed in black, branding face paint, guitars and the power of metal, burned churches to the ground. With a violence that transcended arson, band members committed suicide and murder. They were the boogeymen personified. But what motivated them and their music? Who were the actual people involved? In Until the Light Takes Us, filmmakers Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell packed up their lives and moved to Norway to find the truth behind the scene. How they present their findings is the polarizer of enjoyment to their documentary.
Calling Aites and Ewell filmmakers seems strange, as they are nearly invisible forces within the documentary, allowing the events to unroll as they will (compared to a Michael Moore style of documenting). The film is set up mostly as a series of interviews, with footage inbetween. Their key players are Darkthrone’s Gylve “Fenriz” Nagell and Burzom’s Varg “Count Grishnakh” Vikernes. The difference between the two? Fenriz is still playing music and has a clean criminal slate regarding the crimes of the 90’s. Vikernes was served Norway’s maximum sentence of 21 years for arson and the murder of Mayhem bandmate Øystein “Euronymous” Aarseth. All of Vikernes’ interviews were conducted from prison (although as of this May, he has earned parole).
Nagell and the filmmakers seem to share a similar thesis to what motivated black metal – a sort of artistic response to Westernization. From Vikernes’ interviews, however, we get a taste of his own personal motivations in the scene, his extremist political beliefs and loathing for Christianity. Many of his segments dance around the fact of something well documented and known – Vikernes as a Neo-Nazi. In interviews Aites and Ewell have remarked there are hours of rants and hate-speech from Vikernes, but they did not want Until the Light Takes Us to become Vikernes’ own political platform, so all scenes were unused.
Most of the tension in Until the Light Takes Us comes from the glimpses of the things we DO get. Vikernes’ unconvincing recount of the night he repeatedly stabbed Euronymous in the head in “self defense” is more damning to his character than any other footage Aites and Ewell omitted about his personal politics. The recants of the glory days from other interviewees of the bands Immortal and Ulver suggest no one feels all together remorseful about any of the church burnings or violence.
These are ways in which the ambiguity of the film works, where the viewer is able to fill in the gaps on our own – or at least have an intriguing inner discourse about what the answer might be. But so often the complete lack of narrative thread left me wishing I had brushed up on either my history or filmmaker interviews before watching the movie. The dynamics of how the bands relate to each other now weren’t always clear. For example, Vikernes and Nagell play opposite each other, and one of the first moments of the movie is Vikernes saying (of Nagell), “He’s a special person with special goals. And it’s impossible to know what his goals are.”
Later, we see Nagell watching the footage of this “praise” from Vikernes. At moments like this, I wished Aites and Ewell had interfered more – to prompt a response from Nagell. Whether he took the remark as sarcastic, sincere, or a backhanded insult left me feeling like there was something about this movie I just wasn’t getting.
One of the themes of the movie seemed to be this strive for sincerity. At the opposite end of the spectrum to this theme was one of the documentary’s subjects, visual artist Bjarne Melgaard. A fan of the black metal subculture, two of the best scenes in the documentary come from him. First, from Nagell’s disgust at a contemporary art exhibit featuring photography from early 90’s shows as well as Melgaard’s own painted interpretations. (Clearly inauthentic, to both Nagell and the audience.) And second, when Melgaard convince’s Frost, from the band Satyricon, to set fires in an art gallery and then cut his wrists and torso for live performance art. Strangely, because of the whole detached and removed tone of the documentary, even this act of total insanity seems somehow muted.
Overall, Until the Light Takes Us circles around plenty of points of interest. It just doesn’t often touch directly upon them. In the theater I watched the movie in, I left overhearing a lot of fans wondering where the hell the black metal music was in the black metal documentary. I just think that in Aites and Ewell’s concern to not “sensationalize” what is inherently a sensational topic, they have not created the movie many thought this would be. For that, I’m sure the aforementioned Lords of Chaos adaptation (slated for next year) will fit the bill. Until then, we’ve got this oddly sensitive and mysterious art piece.
Tags: Until The Light Takes Us
