Lords Of Chaos
Directed by Jonas Åkerlund
Review by Rajneel Singh.
Lords Of Chaos is adapted from a much maligned book (of the same name) covering the the 1992 Norwegian church burnings and Black Metal Murders committed by the band members of the band Mayhem and their musician friends. Thanks to its director Jonas Åkerlund (himself actually a founding member of Bathory, one of the world’s earliest celebrated Black Metal bands), the adaptation was heavily researched and reworked to meet the approval of most of the people depicted in the film and the families of most of the individuals who died in the carnage.
Although the film blatantly states that many events have been altered for the film and that some events might be purely fictional (since they were the claims of extremely unreliable narrators), the film does a pretty great job at summation of the events and the characters involved. To some extent, the film is definitely superior to the book and has the benefits from both the director and real-life individuals making their own commentary on history and speculation.
What’s great about the film, beyond being arguably superior to its dubious source, is that it is genuinely entertaining in many places; successfully inserting tension, character drama and – most surprisingly – outrageously funny black comedy into these bleak events. LORDS OF CHAOS isn’t a music-biopic nor a “this is what black metal is about” movie, nor is it a “true crime is stranger than fiction” movie. It is, for the most part, a “stupid kids will do stupid things and then of course things will get out of hand” movie and this, in many ways, elevates the subject to something quite gripping on a human level.
The film is – admittedly – extremely sympathetic to the character of Euronymous – going to to the extent to invent characters and events around him in order to humanize him (and make him the hero of the narrative) and also the film is deliciously – oh so goddamn wonderful and deliciously – cruel to Varg Vikernes; portraying him as a simpering, deluded, overgrown man-baby whose own loose grip on reality infects and spins the events of the film completely out of control. It’s a very Hollywood take on the subject, but it works – if for no other reason than simply that this is the legacy Varg Vikernes deserves. Varg is both villain and constantly bumbling comic-relief and nothing could make me happier than knowing that he would be absolutely furious about how he is portrayed, let alone the fact he’s being portrayed by a Jewish actor.
When it comes to negatives, I have to agree with a lot of reviews I’ve read that the first act – the first 30 minutes or so – is the weakest and doesn’t work very well. The film launches with a lot of angry-young-kids-and-their-angry-music-and-wild-parties tropes when really it should’ve been spent getting into the minds of its characters a fair bit more. A pivotal scene late in the movie sees a debate between Euronymous and Varg about “true Norwegian black metal” and what it means to them and the film, for all its strengths, fails to actually tell the audience what any of that actually means even though it is an aesthetic that drives all of the characters behaviours and values. LORDS OF CHAOS rests on an “angry kids will listen to dark evil sounding music because its cool” motivation, but since it uses this as a trope rather than actually exploring what it meant to these characters, the motivations feel tacked on and a lot of their actions later in the film feel like they come out of nowhere.
Black Metal musicians weren’t members of some biker gang or 80’s London punk squad, they were D&D nerds and privileged, pimply-faced geeks. The theatrics of their music – their art – spoke a lot about the mindset as much as say the fantastical ‘Fourth World’ spoke about the mindsets of the murdering teenage protagonists of HEAVENLY CREATURES. It’s a shame that this gets bypassed in favour of some very cliche Hollywood ‘crazy teenagers’ fluff. Also – understandably – the film has way too many thin, greasy, black-haired, pasty-faced boys in black leather and its really really easy to get lost among the sea of identical-looking faces all spouting identical “I’m tougher than you, brah” dialogue.
As annoying as it may sound, LORDS OF CHAOS could’ve used at least a small sequence somewhere that actually tried to define what black metal is and why these kids thought it was different to everything else and why metal elitism was such a driving factor in their aggression against each other, let alone the rest of the world. The imagery and iconography of black metal is the source of a lot of the film’s humour, but it feels dismissive to not try to understand why these characters didn’t realize how ridiculous everything was.
Beyond that, the film looks great, sounds amazing, is tightly edited with a real sense of propulsion and stakes and has some terrifically memorable sequences and dialogue that is arguably more sensational than the real life counterparts (e.g. the movie version of the infamous Black Circle basement beneath Helvete has vaulted arches and leather sofas and Helvete itself looks better than the real record store ever did). And there’s in-jokes and micro-detailing galore; the more you know about this genre and the events, the more gags and winks to the camera you’ll see (nearly all pointing back at the screen and insisting it’s okay to laugh at what you’re looking at). Even some unintentional comedy gets created if you know your heavy metal lore e.g. like legendary douchebag and all-round piece of shit Hellhammer (Mayhem’s drummer) being portrayed as excusing himself out of scenes so that he won’t be a witness (and accomplice) to Euronymous and Varg’s criminal plans (obviously a request from the real Hellhammer because that’s exactly the kind of self-serving crap he does when he’s not busy bragging about being a Nazi).
This is a long review, but I think LORDS OF CHAOS has a shit-tonne to unpack thanks to the nature of what it portrays; crimes committed by artists who commit crimes because they think their art requires it. It’s a very well-made film and it will appeal to fans of both the metal genre and arguably a lot of true-crime fans. I think its lack of fleshing out of the ‘black metal music scene’ might make the story a little inaccessible to general audiences and of course the film does have a lot of brutality; namely an extremely graphic suicide sequence plus two grisly murders that are depicted in agonizing real-time. If you’re the target audience, you’ll find this entertaining as all hell. If you’re not the target audience, your mileage may vary.
But no matter what…Varg is going to be SO FURIOUS when he sees this film and that is probably the closest we’ll ever get to true justice for that asswipe’s existence on this planet.
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