Big Boys Sometimes Cry
By Eric Cox
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Released by IFC Films
Not Rated
Disclaimer: I am not a fan of heavy metal music--or any metal music for that matter. But when I learned of a documentary about the heavy-metal band Metallica undergoing group therapy, my interest was piqued. Here was a premise worthy of the creative geniuses behind the hilarious mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap (1984), with the added attraction that it actually happened.
The film follows the making of the band's most recent album, St. Anger. As the film opens, bassist Jason Newsted has left the group--or been kicked out, depending on whose version of the story you find most sympathetic--and the band's management company has hired a $40,000-per-month psychotherapist, Phil Towle, to keep the remaining band mates together and thus protect their cash cow.
Seeing Newsted's departure as an opportunity to reinvigorate the group, drummer Lars Ulrich suggests that instead of he and singer James Hetfield writing all the songs, which has been Metallica's standard operating procedure for 20 years, the group should write them together--music and lyrics. Hetfield's facial expressions as he listens to Ulrich's ideas beautifully foreshadows the conflicts between the two that are to come boiling to the surface later in the film.
Guitarist Kirk Hammett also provides comic relief whenever he opens his mouth: His high-pitched voice and extremely mild-mannered personality are nothing like his onstage persona.
And then there are the therapy sessions, which, in addition to being frequently comical, allow the filmmakers to peel back the layers of the band members' public images and examine their true personalities. Beneath the rock-star exteriors, these grown men appear to be nothing more than insecure little boys asking for attention and approval.
Ulrich at one point appears with his eccentric Norwegian father, Torben, who sports a long beard, which he occasionally strokes ponderously, and gently criticizes his son's music for not being artistically on a par with Ozzy Osbourne. The younger Ulrich--who has no problem insulting millions of fans by suing Napster and defiantly defending his position on camera--can hardly look at his father when he describes how he dreads the critical comments that he expects every time he plays a new Metallica song for him.
You won't feel sorry for Ulrich, however, who behaves like a spoiled brat for most of the film. You also won't feel sorry for former bassists Newsted or Dave Mustaine, who whine about being kicked out of the band. (A priceless moment occurs when Mustaine, who went on to form the highly successful metal band Megadeth, is reunited with Ulrich and almost tearfully asks him to imagine the pain that Mustaine has had to endure for 15 years as a result of his split with Metallica.) But you just might feel sympathy for Hetfield, whose personal journey in the course of the film is quite touching and is its emotional core.
Hetfield never asks for sympathy, which is one of his most appealing qualities. It isn't until after he disappears from the film to go into rehab for an extended period--and delays the making of the album for a year--that we learn a bit of his personal background.
Hetfield's parents divorced when he was 13, and his mother died shortly afterward. He threw himself into music and alcohol to dull the pain, and soon after he started Metallica with Ulrich. Through the years, sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll left him ultimately feeling numb to life.
Ironically, it was the group therapy with Dr. Towle, which Hetfield initially thought a silly waste of time, that made him begin to understand the reasons for some of his self-destructive behaviors in time to get help and put his life in order. The Hetfield we see at the end of Some Kind of Monster is not the Hetfield we meet at the beginning of the film, and that is a remarkable transformation for any documentary to capture.
Eric Cox is a Research Fellow at the Sagamore Institute and a movie columnist for TAEmag.com.
