It’s in the very least ironic that the ambiance music playing while we waited for the movie to start was classical music. Especially since the movie we were all waiting to see was the documentary Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. This fact becomes even more ironic when we learn, at the beginning of the movie, that one of the influences of what we call heavy metal was in fact classical music itself.
One of the main triumphs of the documentary is precisely that. The anthropologist and metal-head, as he classifies himself, Sam Dunn is able to lead the audience on a fascinating and accurate journey of the origins of heavy metal and how it became the phenomenon that it is today. He manages to do this on his way to answering the question of why “heavy metal is the most hated and the most loved music genre out there”. While keeping a very personal outlook on the whole journey, brought about mainly by the voiceover narration that Mr. Dunn does throughout the movie, it is inevitable that the documentary would become almost a “members only” club, one that metal-heads only would enjoy and understand.
I’m not a heavy metal lover. I don’t “live” that lifestyle, like the film says. However, I must say that I was hurt by Mr. Dunn’s last words. Just because I don’t “love” it does not mean that I do not or cannot understand that genre of music or what it’s all about. What about those who, like me, enjoy it, like listening to it, but aren’t defined by it? They say punk fans are the most elitist people out there; that they don’t allow punk listeners to listen to anything else because it would take away from your “punkness”. But after watching this documentary I have to say, heavy metal fans are just as bad. If you don’t classify yourself as a “metal-head” then you don’t understand the music? That sounds pretty elitist to me.
That being said, I loved the movie. The documentary was able to bring through, even to an unworthy heavy metal fan, like myself, according to the movie, the essence of metal. It brought through why this music is amazing and why it lives on, with an enormous following, even to this day. Ultimately, maybe without meaning to, Mr. Dunn was able to show to those who still believe that heavy metal is “the devil’s music” that in truth it’s not. It’s just another music sub-culture just like so many others out there. The difference is, those who live that lifestyle really live it, and never grow out of it.