Un sort pour éloigner les ténèbres

I huddled close to the screen with three former black metal friends when this played the Thessaloniki film festival. I was familiar with one of the directors, Rivers, his rituals of ruins and time, and knew from the press release that it somehow involved black metal music. So I brought everyone over.

The opening shot is like out of Bela Tarr, the camera pans for endless minutes across a lake from dusk to dark. The question with this sort of film that often vexes people is what does it mean, why take so long? It means nothing, it decides the canvas, it's the preparatory guitar riff that sketches an outline of sound, the glimpse of nature that you get when you unzip your camping tent in the morning of the first day of vacation, the experience is all ahead to unfold on this place that is at first only the stage for it.

Superficially we have here three stops on a journey: life in an island commune, a solitary trek through Norwegian nature, about the third in a minute.

Everything you need to know about its premise is in the first segment. A group of boys in the commune are building a stucture, one of them talks about utopian architecture and how vision is exploration in a general direction. We can see this in what they build: it is roughly a skeleton of a few wooden beams, no use has been agreed yet that we know, it merely marks, sketches, the space in which something will appear in time.

In the trek through nature we have solitude and reflection away from life, cessation. Woods, a bonfire at night, reading alone in a room, a few atmospheres and all of this still exploration in a general direction. It's not the end of the film though, which maybe says, we have to return to things themselves.

No it's the last segment that is the most powerful, this return to things. If you come to this it should be to see what these guys set out to do in this part and if they managed to do it.

Cleverly they made this the most challenging part to sit through and most apparently aimless. In the first part we had, however aimless, a flow of life, quirky individuals and that hilarious story with fingers in asses (one of the funniest in film), in the second we could admire at some beautiful scenery, or entertain platitudes about 'onenness'.

The third one is a black metal gig in real time. It permits no easy anchor. The sound and imagery are conventionally ugly, there is nothing to really hold on to.

The screen goes black and stays black as a noisy guitar spell is conjured from darkness, the sound goes on for a while in pure darkness. In the theater next to me people started fidgeting, made uncomfortable.

We then acquire the world it comes from, the context; a band playing, probably a rehearsal. Within that first image, we have swimming between sounds, bringing to the fore each time a different facet and texture; drums, bass, vocals. Then more sculpting of world, after several minutes the camera turns and finds an audience in attendance, they had been there all this time. It further finds as part of the group the same man we've been following since the commune, there all this time.

The film is this journey to a subtler sense of that place in which something appears, perception. In this place which other films would establish with a single shot, these guys find plasticity and room.

It's heady in the execution. But it has trivial value as little more than an exercise. I'd much rather find it in a Bela Tarr film or Weeresethakul.

As a shorthand we call these things meditations. Meditation, actual meditation in the Buddhist way, is about unwavering perception, and you find out; every moment is richly layered, and all the more so as you sit.

First of all, let's get one thing clear: this movie is not about Scandinavian Doom Metal as the previous reviewer puts it. Hell, even I'm not sure exactly what this film is exactly about - but what I know - the last half an hour consists of pretty decent Shoegazing kind of Raw Black Metal.

Not the satanic stuff, mind you. Yes, there are healthy dosage of different themes explored in Black Metal, besides the traditional anti-religious stuff.

So, that being said, the only giveaway of this later section of this enjoyable film is the title font and the end of the movie itself. Other than that the movie hides it's Black Metal and portrays a mellow lifestyle that's somewhat slow, somewhat woody and somewhat butt-plugged. Yeah. Somewhat even Hippy. And yes, here they are - terms "Hippy" and "Black Metal" put together in one review, in a complimentary sense.

This movie will be shown at an open-air cinema festival in Latvia. And I'm wondering - how many clueless people will soil their pants at the end of the movie? How many people will just walk away from the las 45-or so minutes of the film? How many people will feel that they bought tickets for the wrong film?

And how many people will just head-bang the living crap out of their necks, when the tremolo picking and blast-beats kick in? A fun pieces of thought to entertain.

Overall - this is a different kind of documentary that deals with themes common in Black Metal (except the lively Hippy stuff). It's very slow, deliberate and in times - funny as the concept of Hell itself.

It depicts various things.

It depicts a group of people living in a friendly and philosophical community. It depicts some gorgeous forest scenes in those slow and moody scenes.

And it depicts a man that lives in this community, that enjoys the woods somewhat more that the average person does, and this man happens to play in a Black Metal band. You can't go wrong with this combo!

An interesting combination of elements, and therefore an interesting film to watch.

7/10 easily.

This film is daunting and made me feel like a complete Philistine. Some of it was a beautiful and unnerving, the hermit or the little blond girl running around in a cardi. The commune part just felt comfortable, some of the hermit part too,since I used to live a similar life in parts of those two,funnily enough my former life also involved the metal part as well.

So in a way the movie, for me was personal and completely freaked me out. I found it invasive and thought, how did you know what i was doing when I was young.

I have often wondered myself lately, maybe I should have stayed doing as i was considering the artificial nature of existence in the city.

Was I having way more fun living in the country roaming around with a massive bearded Latvian dude oft times partaking in small live music concerts but generally just raising metal hell together in a remote shack with massive amps.

I think the answer to the question in the film is SH*T HAPPENED.

the answer to the second question posed by the film would be sh*t will continue to happen because it has happened in the past and keen observers of history will gleefully point out that humans have a bad habit of repeating stupid mistakes.

I think this is in part because of lack of decent historical education but probably in full because of human nature and the time constrictions of the human life span.

Now can the filmmakers please tell me what the film was about, because if the synopsis is correct and it was about spirituality, then wtf there is no such thing.

That is a lesson hard learned.

Find more incoherent rambling at filmstvandlife.wordpress.com

Oh lord I can't believe I paid money to rent this film. It was an absolute chore to finish, even watching the third portion in 2x speed.

Is there anything these pretentious arty filmmakers couldn't film and then write some kind of blathering "profound" nonsense about? This is the laziest kind of filmmaking. Anybody finding meaning or depth in this film is trying way too hard and doing all of the work on their own.

I'll admit it - I just don't get it! I was totally bored for most of the film. Frustrating and awful.

There is a lot I can say is good, even great, about this odd arthouse film. The cinematography is often beautiful, the slower pace makes way for a few genuinely hypnotizing sequences, and, if you don't mind Black Metal, the music is really good. However, there were some setbacks...the main one probably being that I felt the film went on a bit too long. The entire first third of the movie honestly shouldn't be here, it really belongs to another project entirely, and that's not always a problem with me, but I don't find the first third to be all that interesting anyway. There are some fascinating moments here and there, but if only the final 2/3rds made up the entirety of the film, there's no doubt my rating would be higher. The second third follows a hermit as he pretty much goes through his daily life. Not much at all happens, it's extremely slow, but the entire ambient feel of it is beautiful, calming, and visually interesting. Eventually, the hermit goes under a transformation and goes off to perform in a Black Metal band, leading to the film's finale being one half hour long shot of a concert. It's enjoyable to some extent, but it does get mildly dull at some point in its midst; however, by the end of the shot, things start picking up speed and, in the end, the film is mostly effective.