Lords of Chaos

  

Lords of Chaos

2018

Director- Jonas Åkerlund

Cast- Rory Culkin, Emory Cohen, Sky Ferreira, Jack Kilmer, Anthony De La Torre, Valter Skarsgård,  Sam Coleman, Jonathan Barnwell, Wilson Gonzalez Ochsenknecht,  Lucian Charles Collier

            

     Based on real life events, Lords of Chaos centers around some shocking events during the birth of Norwegian Black Metal music, specifically involving the band Mayhem. The film follows Øystein Aarseth, better known by his stage name Euronymous, a guitarist who was one of the pioneers of Black Metal. He espouses a nihilistic form of Satanism endorsing a grim and extreme view of humanity. He finally meets a singer whose obsession (devotion?) with darkness rivals his own; Per Ohlin, better known by his stage name, Dead.

            

     Dead’s obsession with death goes far beyond theatrics. He seems to think of himself as already dead. He is obviously depressed and engages in self harm on stage. All of this finally reaches its logical conclusion when he decides to kill himself. He cuts his wrists, his throat and then blows his head off with a shotgun. Euronymous finds his friend’s corpse and decides to take pictures of it. The images of his dead friend, head half blown off, eventually become the cover of a Mayhem album, adding to the band’s shocking reputation.

            

     Euronymous’  fame and influence grows, and he opens a record store (called Helvete, or Hell) and starts his own record label. He gathers a small group that he calls the Black Circle, a group devoted to Euronymous’ special brand of nihilism. He meets a fan, Kristian Vikernes, that Euronymous initially spurns as a poseur. Kristian is eventually welcomed into the circle, under the stage name Varg, because Euronymous sees that Varg has some real musical talent.

            

     The film presents Euronymous as a showman and it’s never clear how much he buys into the evil image he is selling. Whether he bought into or not, Varg certainly did, and begins a series of arsons, burning down churches.  A kind of antisocial competition begins within the Black Circle, as members try to prove they are really devoted to evil. Things begin to get out of control when they progress from arson to murder.  A member of the circle ,Bård Eithun, (drummer for the band Emperor, known as Faust), murders a man by stabbing him to death. Euronymous is at first  surprised by this but then sees it as a sign of his own influence.

           

     Egos clash and Varg and Euronymous seem to be on a deadly collision course. Euronymous is ultimately concerned with making music and Varg is committed to his goal of social upheaval. Their already tense relationship strains until, in a final confrontation, Varg stabs Euronymous to death, bringing the film to a close.

           

     I’m not a music historian and my love of metal never got any heavier than Megadeth so I won’t claim any special insights about the characters portrayed in the film. Whether the portrayals are accurate or not is matter of opinion, but the basic events in the film all really happened. Dead did kill himself, the picture of his suicide did become an album cover, Faust really murdered a stranger and Varg really murdered Euronymous.

           

     As far as the portrayals, the characters are presented as celebrities who begin to believe their own press. They are also mostly presented as anti-social personalities, which makes it a little difficult to identify with any particular character. Rory Culkin, as Euronymous, does a good job of presenting a morally ambivalent character as likable. I think this character could have taken up a whole movie in and of itself trying to discern how much of the image was real and how much was show.

            

     The only real complaint I have is that even though the film is supposed to center around the progenitors of a music genre, you’ll leave this movie knowing little more about Black Metal than you did going into it. Unlike other music centered biopics like The Doors or Walk the Line, Lords of Chaos has very little music. This is surprising given the director’s background was in music videos.

            

     The film’s depictions of violence are disturbing, not because of their graphicness but rather their matter of factness. They are brutal and without theatrics, especially Dead’s suicide.

            

     The most disturbing thing however, is not the film’s depiction of violence, but the real life fates of those involved. Varg, a professed arsonist and neo-Nazi who was convicted of 1^st degree murder only did 15 years in prison. Faust, who murdered a stranger by stabbing him 37 times, only did 9 years in prison. If the movie has a lesson, I guess it’s that if you’re going to murder someone, it’s better to do it in Norway.