Trigger Warning: Metallica Saved My Life features a variety of flourishes in the editing that include light bursts that may prove impactful for photosensitive viewers. Concert footage does also include expected flashing lights, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Some families you’re born into and some you find. This isn’t a new concept, but, as the world seems to be in total disarray, it’s a philosophical note worth repeating because sometimes we find ourselves growing up in unwelcome spaces. Art always has and will likely continue to provide comfort to the lost and weary for the simple fact that art, good art anyway, helps people feel seen. Touched on briefly by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, two of the founding members of rock band Metallica, in the Jonas Åkerlund-directed (Lords of Chaos; Polar) documentary Metallica Saved My Life, the impetus for making music was a means of expressing their own respective feelings about their lives. What is clear is they didn’t expect the response from individuals around the world who would not only help the band go from total obscurity into behemoths who would traverse the gulf between the thrash metal scene and popular zeitgeist to become one of the well-known acts in modern music. A fan version of Åkerlund’s Metallica Saved My Life has been following Metallica on their current M72 World Tour, supporting their 11th studio album 72 Seasons, but the final cut is making its world debut in the Spotlight+ section of Tribeca Film Festival 2025. This cut, the definitive edition, is a propulsive experience that doesn’t require audiences to know anything at all about Metallica’s lineup or their music in order to recognize why the songs and the band matter to the fans for all that’s within the film is story after story of love, pure love.
Metallica Saved My Life is not a typical documentary. Åkerlund doesn’t delve into the band’s history, their discography, going beat for beat, pulling in stories from the fans as they go, using the fans as a justification to prop themselves up. Instead, Åkerlund uses the band as the vehicle to explore the fans themselves, thereby defining the band through the perspective of the fans. So while current lineup James Hetfield (singer/guitarist), Lars Ulrich (drummer), Kirk Hammett (guitarist), and Robert Trujillo (bassist) is included in both the talking head and footage portions of the doc, it is more often brought in to color areas in which the fans cannot. While the film does cover the early days of Metallica, the death of original bassist Cliff Burton in a tragic tour bus accident, and many other highs and lows in the band’s history, it doesn’t interrogate anything in the band’s career, past or present. Rather, Åkerlund weaves in tidbits about the band through the ways in which the fans — initially listed in the credits as “A Shitload of Metallica Fans” — came to and found love, meaning, and family through the experience of listening to Metallica. If you come to Metallica Saved My Life looking for a Behind the Music experience, look elsewhere because you won’t find it here.
For the uninformed, Åkerlund is not just a feature filmmaker, he’s the director behind such music videos as Metallica’s “Turn the Page” from the 1998 Garage (the broadcast edition a shorter version of the 16-minute video) and was one of the seven credited directors on Beyoncé’s 2016 “Lemonade,” itself a visual version of the musical album, among other projects he’s directed for notable artists. This is important to note as this places Åkerlund not only within the world of music, thereby being able to better utilize the language of music with that of cinema to tell this story, but that the filmmaker has a pre-existing relationship with individuals at the center of this tale. The interesting thing being that Åkerlund directing this documentary, if past is prologue, makes a great deal of sense after listening to several stories of those touched by Metallica. Using a fairly typical structure, Åkerlund executes the doc through a mix of archival footage, new footage, and talking head interviews with the interviews serving as the roadmap from start to finish. The first few interviews are from folks who knew Lars as a teen and, through their testimony, we learn how these first folks were able to hear the songs crafted by Lars and James prompted immediate faith in their abilities as they tapped into something unique. This is pretty typical for a doc that’s using the fans to discuss their favorite band, right, but what becomes a repeated note, an undercurrent bassline, is how frequently, just by continually coming to shows or offering support, several individuals found themselves on staff, developing projects, handling communications, or other tasks throughout the band’s existence. It’s difficult for some (especially those who have worked in the music industry) to see any major band or solo artist as anything more than a corporate entity, yet Åkerlund makes a solid case for a group of individuals who acknowledge the symbiosis that keeps them working, showing great reverence and appreciation; therefore, bringing people in who are already dedicating time and energy to their success makes sense. Ergo, if Åkerlund already has a relationship with the band, being tapped to direct this doc feels like a natural course of action because why wouldn’t they want to employ someone who already has deep knowledge of the music scene and experience working with musicians.
L-R: Robert Trujillo, Kirk Hammett, Lars Ulrich, and James Hetfield in documentary METALLICA SAVED MY LIFE. Photo courtesy of Mercury Studios/Tribeca Film Festival 2025.
This is a running theme throughout Metallica Saved My Life as the stories of the fans propel each segment of the film, most of which include a version of a title card that notifies viewers of what’s about to be explored, each story a different brick in the foundation of a story of a couple of kids who felt like outcasts and ended up building a community. To tell it, Åkerlund coordinates editing and cinematography so that footage is not only captivating, it never lets go once it’s ensnared you with its stories. This looks like stylistic choices wherein flame-like burn-ins appear while subjects are speaking, text versions of dialogue spoken arise alongside the speaker, and, sometimes alongside members of the band, one might see a faded overlap of their face akin to moments in the “Enter Sandman” music video. These flourishes speak to the dramatic side of music, an infusion of showmanship that makes even the simpler moments feel larger than life without obstructing audience engagement. Likewise, the editing from Ben Wainwright-Pearce (Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour; Gaga Chromatica Ball) and Marcus Eriksson is unrelenting, creating a pace of information that moves from moment to moment with a steady pace, surprisingly never once feeling oppressive or without the ability to reflect. Meaning, in this case, that Wainwright-Pearce and Eriksson aren’t looking to speedrun through the narrative like one of the band’s punishing riffs so much as, once pace is established and a groove found, maintaining the rhythm, slowing down only when absolutely necessary. This bring us to Eric Broms’s (Turn the Page; Billy Ideal Should Be Dead) cinematography, which makes a fascinating specific choice in the depiction of the figures past and present, giving the documentary a more intimate and inviting feel: interviews are black-and-white, while footage is in full color. At first, one might think this another stylistic flourish, showing the subjects in monochrome as if evoking the 1991 album Metallica (a.k.a., The Black Album), but it’s far more important than that. The minimalistic visual approach enables the footage shown, whether it’s the fan-made footage, archival footage (almost exclusively fan-made), or nearly-captured, to be the thing that feels most alive, thereby supporting the narrative theme about the fans being what keeps Metallica pumping. Whether it’s members of the band, celebrity fans like proskater Tony Hawk or Jason Momoa (A Minecraft Movie), or the so-described “Shitload of Fans,” all of them being monochromatic makes the home movies, the polaroids, band shirts, livestreams, and other Metallica-related experiences feel more magical, thus making each individual argument — whether from fans from continents like North America and Europe or countries like Saudia Arabia, Iraq, and Botswana — part of a collective tapestry. Because of these stories and Åkerlund’s presentation, one doesn’t need to be part of the Metallica family to understand, one only requires the empathy necessary to acknowledge the very human truth of shared experience.
If there’s a complaint to be had, it’s the strangely apolitical line that the film takes while also being *extremely* political. Again, Metallica Saved My Life is a story about the fans, so the stories coming from one transman who found the support they lacked at home within the Metallica community is extremely moving, as are the several stories from Middle East fans who found the music of Metallica as a release from the oppression they faced every day. For some fans, specifically from the Middle East, listening to Metallica was an act of political rebellion. So when a point is made repeatedly — via footage of James both on-stage and in interviews — talking about how it doesn’t matter your background or who you voted for (among many other things), the beautiful message of inclusion comes off a little hollow when there are likely members of the Metallica fanbase who would reject the very people being featured in the doc solely for their nationality, gender expression, or gender identity. As someone who identifies musically as “One Among the Fence,” who came to Metallica via MTV in the ‘90s, and who still feels a burning rage within as “Until It Sleeps” plays, I can acknowledge the aim of Åkerlund in highlighting the intention of James’s message as one of affection and protection, of encouraging self-love and harmony, to not give up on one’s self or one’s neighbor as what unites us should be the binding force, except the world is growing shakier by the day and, warm as the platitudes are, they feel like an abandonment of responsibility rather than recognizing that the very music that started as emerging from teenage isolation and a need for connection is now, itself, a tool for the oppressed to fight. This doesn’t, by any means, undercut the effectiveness of the stories shared, the passion of the fans, or the real ways in which the music made by Metallica has changed lives (even literally saved them), but it does stand out like a missed note.
At the start of the documentary, its concept of “Metallica” is defined as a state of being. It’s kept nebulous, but the inference is one of warm-welcoming and inclusion and it’s supported by all the stories shared from the band and the fans. So much so that one comes to realize that the title of the doc doesn’t just apply to the fans — some stating it plainly, others metaphorically — but to the band itself. James, specifically, speaks of the darkness within him and Åkerlund utilizes footage (more from recent concerts) of the singer/guitarist to present some of the affirmations that James has shared on stage to encourage the audience to find the support they need in trying times. In this way, Åkerlund crafts a notion that it’s the fans who also save the band, for, without them, there would be no band and, perhaps, no outlet for the negative thoughts and ideations within them which serve as the creative nexus from which the music is born. “Metallica saved my life” applies to all and Åkerlund successfully captures that sensation throughout the film. Again, if you’re looking for stories about the shifting band lineup, the change of their iconic early look in the ‘90s, the Napster period, or anything else, you’re not going to find it here because, in those stories, the fans aren’t what matter. In this way, and especially with the manner Åkerlund shifts the cinematography in the final moments of the film, Metallica Saved My Life is a declarative “thank you” to the band from all the fans (within the band and out) for the impact they’ve made.
Screening during Tribeca Film Festival 2025.
For more information, head to the official Tribeca Film Festival Metallica Saved My Life webpage.
Final Score: 4.5 out of 5.
Share this:
Categories: Films To Watch, In Theaters, Recommendation, Reviews
Leave a Reply