END OF INNOCENCE

The main feature of this DVD is a long documentary called End Of The Innocence, directed by Timo Halo. It contains mostly interviews with songwriter, leader and keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen and drummer Jukka Nevalainen talking about the band´s story and philosophy, plus many backstage shots (with lots of inside jokes), studio snippets, tour images on and off stage from several countries and so on. Quite interesting for the ones that are fond of Nightwish, but I thought at the time it was a bit too soon for a group that young (around the time of their Century Child CD).

However, the extras were the best part: They include the band performing six songs in the Summer Breeze Festival in Germany, 2002. The images are excellent and the soundtrack is quite good too. There is also another live performance, this time at the Rockfeller, Oslo, Norway, 4th of July, 2003. Nightwish plays five tunes and it features the then new bassist Marco Hietala taking the vocal spot during a good cover of W.A.S.P.´s Wild Child. The sound and image´s quality here is inferior but still acceptable.

There are also two videos, the excellent Over The Hills And Far Away and the bad End Of All Hope. The former shows how their budget for videos had swollen since the very simple The Carpenter just three years before. A short MTV Brazil interview (without Tuomas) is also included.

A good documentary, with some fine extras to boost it. Good for the fans of the band, but hardly essential. If you want to see Nightwish just playing at their peak I strongly recommend you to get their brilliant From Wishes To Eternity. Rating for this one: between 2.5 and 3 stars.

My review is the second one for this documentary DVD, and quite the opposite to T. Moura's very kind - though not toothless - approach. I feel I terribly wasted nearly three hours of my life - no, less, because I really couldn't avoid using x16 speed here and there. Anyone knowing my music taste would ask why I chose to watch a Metal band documentary in the first place. I do have a (very tiny) interest towards NIGHTWISH's music, and I think I wasn't very wrong to hope for a better film.

It was on an artistic level of seedy bonus materials one usually finds on concert DVD's, where they are naturally shorter, just a little extra to please fans. Imagine over two hours of that. A messy salad of these ingredients: the retrospective talk by frontman Tuomas Holopainen and drummer Jukka Nevalainen - this stuff, filmed on a dim summer cottage, is more or less the main substance, cut into little pieces amidst everything else - ; silly backstage footage that confirmed my each and every prejudice of Heavy/Metal world's ridiculous rituals; low-quality concert clips; amateurish footage from tours all over the world; awkward inside jokes; and... well, that's basically all. Many a time someone says to the camera something like "This must not come into the DVD". Right. Nightwish had at this point released four albums, and was indeed too young and unmatured band to make so lengthy documentary about!

Anyway, I felt sympathy for Tuomas and his feelings. In the summer and autumn of 2001 he felt like having enough of it all, the heavy touring, too busy studio schedules, the alienating effect of success etc, and made a decision of breaking the band. After spending some time off in the majestic Northern Finnish landscapes he came to his senses. He confesses how he regrets his cowardice of not sacking the original bassist face to face. Apart from Tuomas's seriousness on his retrospective confessions (and Jukka's), everyone on this film is seen only from the phoney and brainless angle of show biz. The operatic soprano Tarja Turunen, who was later notoriously sacked by a public letter, seems quite a nice bandmate among wild Heavy Metal guys. And prettier at least.

There are plenty of extras too, but I don't consider them so interesting either. Two music videos, a photo gallery, MTV Brazil interview, a low-quality concert footage from Norway and Germany's Summer Breeze Festival 2002. I could rate this with one star on my personal reception, but for a die-hard fan this is undoubtedly a more precious look inside the band's early stages.