Films > Film Reviews
Black Sabbath - The End Of The End
Cinema City
05/10/17
OK. This is a toughie. First, I will be paying little more than perfunctory lip-service to impartiality, as it is my heartfelt position that Black Sabbath, certainly until Ozzy’s departure in 1979, were one of the greatest bands of all time. Not one of the greatest rock bands, not one of the greatest metal bands, but one of the greatest bands. Ever. Period.
Even if you disagree with that statement, like a tit, do a quick Youtube search on “Sabbath 1970 Paris” and have a quick look at anything that comes up. Yeah? See? Good, so we’re all on the same page now.
Even if Sabbath aren’t your thing, you can’t possibly deny their importance. Sabbath pretty much invented Heavy Metal, wrote all its tropes, perfected its formulae, and lived its excesses. It’s now almost 50 years since metal slouched towards Birmingham to be born, and Sabbath, who have been active in one form or another ever since, have called it a day. Their last gig was played on February 4th at Birmingham's 16,000-seat Genting Arena, and filmmaker Dick Carruthers (Led Zeppelin: Celebration Day) was there to preserve it.
The End of the End comprises three element: footage from the gig, interviews, and studio footage shot a few days later. The gig footage is, unsurprisingly, extraordinary. Sabbath sound raw and honest grinding through classics like Children of the Grave and Paranoid, and there’s a couple of surprises too, Behind the Wall of Sleep and Under the Sun being particularly welcome. They actually appear to be having fun, and Ozzy’s voice, which has been a little, err, unreliable in recent years, sounds great.
The studio footage is excellent, too, with The Wizard being an unforgettable highlight, and the interview material is all good fun, revealing the three original members Ozzy, Tony Iommi, and Geezer Butler (drummer Bill Ward is, unfortunately, absent over contractual arguments) to be unpretentious and good humoured.
The problem with The End of the End is that it just doesn’t feel important enough, at least not for the final word on such a great and important band. Sure, the gig footage is bowel-shaking and great fun, but there isn’t a single song from anything post Master of Reality, their third album, which was released in 1971, and that misses out a lot of extraordinary music. The interview footage is kind of unsatisfying as well. We don’t really learn anything other than the fact that Sabbath are nice chaps, which is surprising only to people that know absolutely nothing about them.
The film’s three-element structure essentially gives us a little bit of three things that could each have constituted a film in their own right. I would very happily have watched two hours of just concert footage with a more inclusive treatment of Sabbath’s extensive catalogue, or two hours of interview footage that delved deeper into the personalities and history of the band, or two hours of them dicking around in a studio having fun and playing obscure songs. Instead we get two hours comprising all three, with all three elements suffering from the inclusion of the other two.
That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy The End of the End, though. I enjoyed every second, in fact. But, being the final word on a band I love, I wanted more. When the Blu-Ray is released on November 17th, I’ll be first in line, and I’ll watch it as soon as I get it. But I’ll be watching that 1970 Paris gig straight after.