Second Hand Movies Done Dirt Cheap: Lords of Chaos, (2018, Dir Jonas Åkerlund , 1h 58m)

There are few bands in music with a history to rival the chaotic, violent, tragic, lauded existence of Mayhem. Over an existence of thirty-five years, the band have not only released five albums (with a sixth, the aptly named Daemon out later this year), but also begat, perfected and moved beyond the black metal genre they essentially created in the basements and studios of early 1990s Norway. Yet, it is the part of their history that lies between the music that truly marks them out, and which 2018's Lords of Chaos focuses upon-a history that, up to the release of their first album, which the film closes out on, included suicide, murder, church-burning, violence, and a singularly misanthropic power struggle between two of the architects of the genre, leading to the death of one at the hands of the other.

It's a story that, for all its infamy, in a musical form that almost relishes the outrageous and the profane, haunts the entire genre, and Mayhem in particular, an albatross that the band carry to this day, and this film, in its disservice to the genre, and to the band, in its sneering adaption of a tabloid half-truth only adds to the weight. There are many ways to tell this story, and Lords of Chaos manages to do it in the worst possible way; a rushed, cliche-ridden, badly shot, film that manages to tell but an abridged and highly exaggerated version of one of the darkest, weirdest, and most unusual tale in music history, in what may be the unintentional comedy of last year.

 The film begins, as Mayhem did, with Euronymous (real name Øystein Aarseth, played by
Rory Culkin). Aarseth is our protagonist, narrator, and certainly the main character, as we're led through a whistle-stop version of the band's very early history-mostly the replacement of original drummer Manheim with (still current drummer) Hellhammer and a little of the context of what it meant to be Norwegian and teenage at the end of the Cold War. It even manages to mix in a little of comedy that does work, with Aarseth's younger sister openly declaiming that the proto-Mayhem "suck". For his part, Culkin is a surprisingly decent ringer for Aarseth, even if the film exaggerates and downplays his later actions, and certainly his performance captures the positive and negative aspects of Aarseth the man and the musician well.

At points his performance violently reminds us that this figure of evil is barely into his twenties, and certainly captures the vulnerability when his self-built world of a band and a record label and the respect of his peers begin to crumble around him, even if the film leans far too hard on this in its last act. In fact, my biggest issue with Culkin and one that extends to the cast at last, is that he's not Scandinavian. There are certainly any number of talented actors from Northern Europe that could have played Aarseth, and thus added an extra layer of authenticity to a film that practically seems to trade on it, not only in the recreation of Helvete, the shop that formed the epicentre of the genre, but in the very fabric of the sets and clothing every character wears. It's, in short, a missed opportunity

At this point, Mayhem realise they have a problem-a lack of a vocalist, and thus enter Dead. Dead, (Per Ohlin, played by Jack Kilmer) is the best single thing about Lords of Chaos, not only in the performance, which strikingly resurrects the Swedish vocalist, but in just how jarring and alien this nihilistic young man is to the nascent Mayhem. Kilmer's performance is, despite its brevity, the best thing about this film. He perfectly captures Dead as an individual and a performer, from the oddness that many musicians of the period recall to his self-destructiveness and nihilistic view on life. The latter is seen perfectly in an extended sequence, in which Aarseth threatens the apathetic Dead with a gun, before Dead encourages Aarseth to shoot him, a scene that the film nightmarishly returns to several times. His brief but stark appearances underline not only Dead's influence upon Mayhem, and the genre in his pure misanthropic nihilism, but also the undercurrent of violence that will later come to the fore with Mayhem's rise to prominence.

Armed with Dead's stage presence, his iconic corpsepaint, quickly copied by Aarseth, first appearing in a scene that shows, albeit briefly, a sense that there may be more to life than black metal, so Mayhem begin to rise in prominence, culimating in a fully-shot live performance by Mayhem. Mayhem the band is where the film is at its best, Åkerlund's experience as a storied music video director paying off in spades, and giving a sense of what it would have been like to experience-and experience is certainly the right word, Mayhem during this era. This culminates, in wince-inducing detail, that returns horrifically several scenes later with Dead's suicide, with the vocalist slashing his arms and spraying, somewhat Peckinparishly, his blood onto a rapturous audience. It is also through this scene that Mayhem, and in particular Aarseth begins to regard black metal as something exclusive, and for a certain group only, not for the "posers" that the band, and indeed the scene, look down upon. That this is one of only two scenes in which we see Mayhem play together, however, seems to indicate Åkerlund's focus is not so much on the band as musicians, but on the band's infamous extracurricular activities.

It is here, albeit briefly, that the film's other key figure is introduced, in the form of Kristian Vikernes, who will quickly rename himself Varg (Emory Cohen). Cohen...works with what he has, in my opinion. Varg the real person has long since disappeared off into self-parody, a nutso far-right Odinist who makes the views of large sections of the rest of the black metal genre seems reasonable, not to mention reprehensible for the actions that this film obviously re-creates. Varg Vikernes the character is little better-no film about this events could possibly make him seem anything other than a villainous figure (save, perhaps for the overly sycophantic black metal documentary Until the Light Takes Us which devotes a good chunk of its runtime to interviewing Vikernes in prison), but Lords of Chaos seems to flick back and forth indeterminably between Vikernes being a diabolical genius who schemes his way to women, control of the "Black Circle" that the film comes to focus on in its latter stages, and a complete and utter moron, obsessed with his image, with the authencity of the genre, and at points buffoonish.

It is with Vikernes' introduction, and the summary exit of Dead, via knife, shotgun, and nihilistically comic suicide note, that the film's issues with tone begin to appear. Dead's death-scene is, unintentionally, hysterically, bleakly, funny-whether it be the utter detachment of the camera shooting a young man who wanders around a room bleeding out, the poor, B-movieesque special effects, a complete lack of direction for Kilmer to follow, or the utterly deadpan reaction that Culkin gives once he arrives at the house to find Dead very much deceased, before popping out for a disposable camera.

Whatever contributes to this sudden complete tonal jar, at this point the film merrily jumps the rails of serious drama and goes on a crosscountry skid through black comedy that continues,off and on, for the rest of the film's runtime. It is this tonal imbalance, this inability, either intentionally or unintentionally, to mix a little black comedy with a film that otherwise takes its subject matter relatively seriously, that fatally hamstrings Lords of Chaos-certainly, the genre has occasionally, in its overly-serious grim outlook upon life, and in its triumph of ambition over skill, been inadvertently comic, but this film seems to almost relish making fun of the genre, from its goofy tone in certain moments to the grumpy teenagers in their room-esque dialogue about darkness, Satan and evil that borders on the laughable. Whether this be down to Åkerlund's past with the genre-as one-time drummer for genre godfathers, Bathory-or simply bad script, it's a needlessly cruel, needlessly long joke at their expense.

With Dead out of the picture, and bassist Necrobutcher having quit the band in utter disgust at the rest of the band's attitude to his death,  so Mayhem continue, with Aarseth opening Helvete (Hell), in the cetre of Oslo, which quickly attracts a number of members of other bands into what he quickly daubs the Black Circle, including Vikernes, who now calls himself Varg, and his band, Burzum. Here, truth joins the tone in its cross-country jaunt-though the film's tagline proudly daubs the film "Based on truth and lies", here the film is in pure fiction. Doubtless, from the veritably incestuous nature of the genre in these early days, this community of outsiders, misanthropes and musicians were close, but this film, by introducing the entirely ficticious Black Circle, lends the events that follow a needless structure of one-upmanship, rather than random violence and destruction meted out for kudos among a group of disaffected and nihilistic young adults.

As the rivalry between Aarseth and Vikernes begins to grow, lit by the former's hazing of the latter, and the slight against him from Aarseth's mishandling of his record, and this rapidly develops into a series of ever-escalating acts of violence and destruction, starting with Varg's arson against Fantoft stave church. Strangely, and somewhat daringly, unlike the remaining church burnings in this film, Fantoft's destruction is almost entirely off-screen, only appearing, through reused footage of the actual event, on television. To Aarseth's disbelief, this notoriety kickstarts the growth of Burzum as a force to rival Mayhem, artistically and  otherwise, which threatens everything Aarseth has worked for, before, in desperate measures, he appoints his rival Mayhem's bassist.

At this point, convincing Aarseth to accompany him to burn a church, Varg transforms into what I can only describe as a scenery-chewing villain, delivering a rambling speech on how Christianity has usurped the places of Norse paganism to the reluctant Aarseth, in a scene that layers on images of burning icons, crosses, and building, whilst, in what may be their strangest soundtrack work ever, Icelandic post-rockers Sigur Rós (who soundtrack this entire film at their wispiest and most etherial), strike up in the background. After Black Circle member Bard Faust (Valter Skarsgård) knives a homosexual man, in a scene that's as needlessly gratuitous as it is overly long, the trio proceed to-what else-burn down another church. Each of these church-burning scenes seem to last longer, be ever increasingly overladen with symbolism-this time we get a suitably Odinistic raven hulking on a cross before the burning church-and say, somehow, even less than the last one.  

By this point, with crimes building up, Aarseth's fear about his crimes being discovered leads to a power struggle inside the Black Circle, with Varg now openly mocking him; together with his paranoia, the "dark and evil crap (that) was supposed to be fun" begins to sour, although Aarseth continues to busy himself with Mayhem's first full-length album, and a (entirely fictious and very shoehorned in) romance with a photographer Ann-Marit (Sky Ferreira. In fact, the film's approach to sex is, in a word, unnecessary-Aarseth at one point complains about the number of girls that have essentially become Varg's groupies, whilst there is a lingering sense, an undertone, particularly in the latter stages of the film of a hinted, and obviously unrequited love of Dead from Aarseth's point of view-the fact that Ann-Marit is the only other blonde in the film only compounds this, and in a dream sequence, shot entirely in black and white, it's made deliberately easy to confuse the two. It's one of the rare times, to Åkerlund's credit, that something is added to the narrative that you wish the film actually expanded on. It does not.

Thus the film begins to rapidly roll to its conclusion-Varg, seeking ultimate kudos among the circle, calls in the press to claim complete responsibility-the scene that follows, with Varg sat between Nazi swastika and miscellaneous Viking paraphernalia, veers wildly between nailing Varg's ideology, then and now, as a vaguely defined, and vaguely risable mix of miscellaneous Far-Right, Oinistic and Satanist creeds, and a laughable mess of a scene brought crashing down by Varg's assistant arriving with tea. Varg is arrested, bailed, and rolls up to announce that he is leaving Mayhem, to start his own record label, and we get perhaps the scene that comes closest to really explaining where Åkerlund's film misses the point, with the admission from Aarseth that the fragments of Dead's skull bequeathed upon the members of Mayhem are nothing more than chicken bone.

In short, everything that Aarseth, everything that Helvete, everything that Mayhem and the other black metal bands' actions were, is nothing more than teenage pranking and front writ large, run out of control by Vikernes, despite Aarseth's actions. This, bluntly, is bullshit. Throughout Lords of Chaos, Åkerlund, in search of an identifiable character among the misanthropic hordes, whitewashes much of what Euronymous was, from his cruelty towards Dead, his open Satanism and Communist beliefs, and revelry in the dark and violent aspects of existence, together with his far more overt embracing of churchburning and violence that the film downplays.

But in its lionising of Aarseth, the film hamstrings itself down to a simplistic evil versus not-so-evil battle for the soul of black metal, between Aarseth and Vikernes, the creator having lost control of the monster Vikernes represents, and fighting desperately to wrest it back. In this myopic focus, Lords of Chaos loses sight of the scene in general, the impact Euronymous had in converting whole swathes of Norwegian bands to his new sound, the panoply of the genre, from the harshness of Darkthrone to the technical complexity of Emperor to the folk inflected Ulver, not to mention the explosion of the scene across the world. In its focus on the infamy, it can't see the majesty of the black metal woods for the burning churches.

Thus the film inevitably draws towards Aarseth's death, via a scene with real life music journalist Jason Arnopp playing a twenty five year younger version of himself, that essentially acts as his own overwrought, self-congratulatory epitaph, before, contract in hand, Varg makes an appearance at Aarseth's front door. And it is here that, having gone cross country, the comedy reappears, flailing knives and wearing a Burzum t-shirt, and finally bundles the film off a mountainside into the icy Nordic fjords below. If Dead's death was accidently comic, this is deliberately, bleakly, ridiculously funny.

With the duo having processed rapidly through every cultured murderer and stage of denial, and having stabbed the unfortunate Aarseth several times, Varg pauses, having trapped his unfortunate bandmate in his own flat, and proceeds to make a Norwegian Nesquik. In painstaking. Step by step. Detail. The camera lingers lovingly upon the entire process, as Varg opens the fridge, retrieves the milk, stirs the powder into a glass, checks twice, and begins to unhurriedly drink. The entire sequence lasts two minutes, interspersed with Aarseth looking for his keys. It is the laugh-out-loud highpoint of the most overwrought, cliched, ridiculous murder scene in mainstream cinema this century, only ending with Aarseth dead on the floor, with Varg's knife lodged in his head.

It is the moment this film gives up, in a badly shot, comedic, appallingly acted bloodletting, soundtracked mawkishly by an Icelandic post rock band who found their fame making music for trailers and car commercials-the soundtrack is oddly devoid of black metal, indicating a general-seemingly well-placed-distrust for this project, and Sigur Rós are simply too lightweight to give this film the harshness it desperately needs.The movie peters out, Aarseth given a completely flippant self-epitaph that feels like a student ad lib on the ending of Goodfellas, and we're left with black and white footage, arrests, and an empty aftermath in which the film tries to regain a serious and respectful nature it blew out with Dead's brains an hour and a half ago, and this travesty finally collapses into childishly scribbled credits to the Real Mayhem playing their signature song, Freezing Moon.

Lords of Chaos is a mess, a film that has no affection nor respect nor care for its subject-in fact, it's one of those films that makes you really question who this is for-no self-respecting Mayhem, or indeed black metal fan that I know of gives this film any time, such is its liberties with the progenitors of the genre and the storied history of this band, plus its needless additions in romance subplots and omissions in the form of every other band in the genre at this point. Yet, on the other side of the coin its plot is too weird, outlandish, too niche, despite its mainstream additions, to cater to a wider audience-nor from its limited release was it ever intending to. It falls, unloved, between the gaps.

But it is the tone of this film that is truly headscratching. At points this film is shockingly violent, brutally verité, its attention to detail impressive-the cast is well-chosen, if one forgives the preponderance of American actors-and its record of what it was like to be in that inner circle of Helvete right on the mark. In others, however, it is almost wilfully inconsistent, utterly dismissive of the actual music that these people produced, and unintentionally hilarious in its tonal dissonance. All of this, unfortunately, seems to fall at the feet of Åkerlund; he may well be a Grammy-award winning music video director, but his theatrically released films are a boneyard of failures, of which Lords of Chaos simply feels like the most recent.

The simple thing seems to be this. Jonas Åkerlund, having long since left black metal, left Bathory, behind for the world of making music videos for everyone from Beyoncé and Metallica to Madonna and Rammstein, may regard it as a genre wrapped up in juvenile and childish actions, punching down with glee to make a mockery of Mayhem. Or he may just be really bad at making narrative films. Either way, Lords of Chaos simply feels like an insult, and not even a competent one, both to Mayhem as a band, and black metal as a genre. 

The strange thing is, as I've been working on this review, I've been listening back to a lot of old black metal from about this period. Mayhem, of course, Burzum, inevitably, but bands I've never really strayed across before, or haven't listened to for years, from Satyricon, a band that took the black and white world of black metal and made it technicolour and otherworldly, ending up, in that least underground of places, signed to EMI, to Ulver, a band that stepped outside the genre for good three albums into their career, for electronica and experimentalism and have never looked back, to Enslaved, a band that, in a career that's moved from black to viking to experimental metal, contributed to the celebration of Norway's 200th anniversary.

Black metal is indelibly entwined with Norway, to the extent that, after the fish and the oilfields, corpsepainted misanthropes screaming about Satan and the like are a major export of the country, and, if Lords of Chaos pins one thing down, it's this, this intrinsic connection between Norway and its infamous musical genre, between the freezing darkness within and without. Black metal is a genre and Mayhem is a band that need no adaption of their story, let alone this unintentionally comic travesty of a film. For all this history, for all this infamy, black metal's myriad artists speak for themselves.  
 
Rating: Neutral