A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness review

Reflections from a Young Movie-Goer

 Less a documentary and more a visual essay, A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness (2013) is a collaboration between Ben Russell and Ben Rivers. It follows musician and artist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe through three separate locations; a commune in Estonia, a forest in Finland and a black metal gig in Norway. This is perhaps all there is to say on the plot. All three segments have their own distinct style of film-making. The commune is observational, capturing conversations both inane and philosophical (and often both). For instance, there is a discussion following an orgy in a sauna about whose finger was in whose rectal cavity, and later one woman explains with a child-like innocence the spiritually unifying force of Trance music. The Forest has a meditative, poetic quality to it where the shots cease to resemble any sort of a narrative and sometimes linger for minutes. The black metal performance, in contrast, is claustrophobic and raw. Yet, filmed in only one take that rotates slowly around the band, there's something hypnotic about it that gives the film's very final moments of quiet an immense sense of catharsis.

While all three "spells" feel completely different, not just physically but emotionally, they all have a meditative, isolating and intuitive quality to match their natural settings. More than anything, one is struck by a sense of anarchic alchemy, where each shot feels caught rather than contrived, unique and particular to that moment. The exchanges between commune-dwellers. The incredibly long take of Robert rowing out into a lake, watching a log cabin burn. The unflinching endurance of the last segment. There is a rawness and honesty in this technique, which similarly evokes this lurking darkness within and without. Place and person form a kind of duality, at times part of one another, and both permeated by the darkness that accompanies a brooding loneliness. And each mortal moment evokes a sense of temporality and eternity, one is left to answer how each "spell" brings value to an otherwise meaningless life.

At first one could mistake it for a music video from some obscure, hipstery post-metal band. The pretensions of those earlier conversations, the aestheticism of the forest and the brutality of the black metal performance are easy to pass off as style over substance. But if one can get past those initial irritants, there's a more profound, resonant purpose to their inclusion that lurks just beneath the surface.