thomas4cinema

When recording their new album, Metallica members invite a documentary film team to prepare some nice promotional footage. When during the recordings, the band starts breaking apart, with the lead singer taking off for a year for rehab and the others trying to decide on what to do, this documentary turns out to become a psychological name card of ageing rock bands. It is surely not by any means an excellent documentary, but the subject matter turns out to be luckily picked: One of the highest-grossing rock bands in history behaving like a group of pre-school kids because they are forced to stick to each other despite them hating each other (or rather, in my interpretation: Lars Ulrich being sick of jealousy about the frontman’s role in the band – and that frontman and lead singer (Jack? James!) again despising Ulrich for his simplistic world views and reduced perspective. Band managers, psychologists, producers, children play all their part in this, including a former band member that got kicked out years ago, had considerable success with his own band (if I only remembered…) but apparently suffered a massive trauma from being considered one of the prime losers of the Heavy Metal genre.
Very weird, with actually only a few bits of music (which is all for the better given that the album in question is not considered one of Metallica’s masterpieces) and a focus on the strange normality of millionaire headbangers trying to grow up.