Until the LIght Takes Us is a 2008 documentary on the black metal movement in Norway that spawned a series of church burnings and murders.
The movie has pretty compelling subject matter and the directors match their cuts, music, and pacing to it. Ambience of the movie is stark and cold and, though, no frightening, it still has a sense of gloom that hangs over it throughout the film.
However, I have to say this film didn't capture anything interesting or new that I could have picked up through Wikipedia. It really didn't seem to reveal the humanity or lack of in each of the characters. And this could be because the characters were cold and calculating in the same way that a movie starlet or politician is. They seemed to have the right thing to say at the right moment.
There was also a subplot threaded through of a Norwegian artist creating works based on the black metal movement. I couldn't follow why he was there. He seemed to be there to show the commercialization of the genre and how it has fallen from an underground and political music to something that caters to the masses, but that's after I really think about it. Here in America, I expect commercialization not to come from a painter or a sculpture but to hit us over the head in the form of movies, pop covers, and actual commercials. So it may have just been a cultural mistranslation that I didn't pick up on.
Overall, I think this flick is a good watch. It has some really interesting moments and let's you into a genre that isn't so well known here in the states. And we all know how I love those kinds of docs. It's on Netflix, but I also found it on Youtube. Take a watch and let me know what you think.
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