Metallica: Some Kind of Monster

Banging heads: Metallica: Some Kind of Monster brilliantly chronicles a troubled musical relationship

By Jeannette Catsoulis

With "Fade to Black," in 1984, I was hooked; and while my friends drooled over Duran Duran I was hiding my copies of Master of Puppets and The Black Album under the couch. My love affair with Metallica lasted about 10 years, until its music began to sound less instinctive and more repetitive; nevertheless, the guys whose hard drinking would earn them the nickname "Alcoholica" have cemented their position as bona fide rock legends with the sale of more than 90 million albums since 1981. Beat that, Korn.

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster was originally commissioned by the band as a kind of diary of the recording of St. Anger, its first album in five years. But as the cameras roll and the band members struggle to find that old metal groove, the center fails to hold; and instead of an eruption of inspiration, what surfaces are all the jealousies, resentments and psychological debris you'd expect in any long-term relationship--even one not burdened by massive egos, an assortment of addictions and fans expecting youthful aggression from middle-aged musicians.

Everyone has issues. Volatile frontman James Hetfield, after years of vodka-induced profligacy, is hustled off to rehab for alcohol and "undisclosed addictions." But not before yelling and slamming doors and ousting bass player Jason Newsted for daring to form a new band, Echobrain. "The way I learned to love things is by choking them to death," admits Hetfield in a rare moment of candor. His need for control is also blocking the band's attempts to create a new, synergistic method of songwriting--he doesn't want to share, a fact that frustrates drummer Lars Ulrich to no end. Ulrich is also struggling with the fan backlash engendered by his Napster lawsuit, while guitarist (and Buddhist) Kirk Hammett looks on placidly as though all this squabbling has nothing to do with him. At times he seems so distant you'd swear he was transcendentally meditating--until someone suggests the new album should have no guitar solos. That gets his attention, all right.

A creepy therapist/life coach named Phil Towle is hired--to the tune of $40,000 a month--to help the band "transition." And now the film really heats up as Towle tosses psychobabble onto the fire of Ulrich and Hetfield's marital difficulties. Hetfield's post-rehab passive-aggression is doing Ulrich's head in, and things become so confrontational that the filmmakers, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, are called into the frame to discuss the wisdom of the band continuing with the film. Or continuing with therapy. Or continuing as a band at all.

This is all great stuff, of course, but the real beauty of Metallica is its understanding of a business, and a fan base, that provide no way to age gracefully while retaining musical credibility. Filmmakers Berlinger and Sinofsky, in films like Brother's Keeper and Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, have demonstrated perceptiveness about the way men in small groups interact, and they know how to structure a film for maximum impact while retaining an off-the-cuff immediacy. Intercutting rambunctious early concert footage with scenes of Lars nervously playing new songs for his hyper-critical, Gandalf-bearded father, the directors show a band that--love it or hate it--takes its music very seriously.

Compulsively watchable, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster has moments of surprising poignancy, as when ex-member Dave Mustaine, kicked out in 1983 for--what else?--a drinking problem, reveals that he has never gotten over the pain. Or when Lars earnestly confides to the camera that "James can only say `I love you' after, like, 42 beers." We've all been there, man.