Home
sign up| features / film feature |
 content by: editor |
 metallica: some kind of monster interview
Troubled rockers show their true mettle. Ever since Rob Reiner’s benchmark spoof, This Is Spinal Tap, it’s been nigh on impossible to view the rockumentary in the same light. Rock’n’roll was exposed as being ripe for sending up, particularly the realm of heavy metal with its sky-high production values and pantomimic pomp. In Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s biopic of Metallica, Some Kind Of Monster, they walk this directorial tightrope, showing the trappings and pitfalls of vast wealth as quite ludicrous. At the same time, though, they display the genuine human emotion within the lives of volatile band members James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammett as they struggle to stay together.  “We thought we would be spending about two weeks doing behind-the-scenes stuff around the new album. But as soon as we arrived, the shit hit the fan,” says Berlinger of the project, which took almost three years to complete. “The band started disintegrating. But because we were friends with them, we convinced them to let us film it and they had the courage to let us.” Berlinger and Sinofsky had previously encountered the band, not through a love of their music, but when they made the film Paradise Lost, documenting the trial of three small-town US teenagers accused of a gruesome triple murder where Metallica lyrics were cited in evidence against them.  The timing of the documentary could barely have been more perfect. In their increasingly desperate attempts to work out their problems, the band employed therapist/performance enhancement coach, Phil Towle. For his staggering $40,000 a month salary, he became the fourth member of the band as they recorded their latest album - the aptly entitled St Anger - mediating the conflict with an arsenal of psychoanalytical platitudes. “I look back at this film and I’m amazed it came to be,” says Berlinger. “I’m amazed at the access they gave us, amazed the label didn’t shut us down. Promotional films are intended to promote - filming people in the best of situations, not the worst of situations.” And it’s certainly that. While there are unmistakable moments of Tap-esque pomposity, ultimately Hetfield, Ulrich and Hammett are portrayed sympathetically. Those with even a passing interest in music, let alone heavy metal, will find Some Kind Of Monster utterly absorbing.
Ben Arnold
Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster, on selected release 01 October 04.
 conversations
Read members' comments.
|
 |
related info
 useful linkswww.metallica.com
note: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
see also
related member reviews
by lovefist_fury by releaseroger
also on bbc.co.uk
on bbc.co.uk/music books  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. |
send to a friend
access 1000s of articles
