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According to the new film “Metallica<\/a> Saved My Life,” the band had its first “insane reaction” from a crowd in San Francisco in 1982 – and the documentary channels that same voltage.<\/p>\n The new documentary screened Thursday, Oct. 9, at the 48th Mill Valley Film Festival<\/a>, and was followed by a live Q&A with filmmaker Jonas \u00c5kerlund and an ever-toothpick-doting Lars Ulrich, the band’s drummer. A wider theatrical release is slated for this spring.<\/p>\n Loud, fast and full of motion, the documentary feels like the music. The cuts, zoom-ins, punches of illustration and collisions of color recreate the chaos of a Metallica show. The Sequoia Cinema crowd sat politely – good posture, hands folded neatly in laps – and the contrast between the on-screen oomph and the calm in the seats was almost comical. Still, a charge ran through the room, a flicker of the adrenaline fans describe, convincingly, as life-sustaining.<\/p>\n The film jumps from San Quentin to San Jose, Botswana to Antarctica. Along the way, it threads in familiar faces\u00a0– Tony Hawk<\/a> tipping his helmet to Metallica’s skate-scene roots, John Cena thrashing around in the pit, and a few academics who help decode what makes the band’s sound hit so hard.<\/p>\n The fans, though, are the backbone of the documentary. They span continents, generations and reasons for devotion. There’s a man from Japan who opened a Metallica-themed bar; a couple who rekindled love gone stale at a concert; a lifelong collector with walls lined in posters; another with drawers full of guitar picks.<\/p>\n One fan featured in the film, Chilean-born Camila Guerrero, sat in the front row, watching “Metallica Saved My Life” for the fifth time. She had come all the way from Adelaide, Australia, for the screening.<\/p>\n