At Alice Springs Cinema, cinema #2, front row, 18.30, almost just me. Directed and co-written by Justin Kurzel (The Order (2024), etc.). Nick Fenton is credited as the other co-writer. It seemed to take an age to get a release (on 2025-07-12?) after its premiere at MIFF 2024 last August.
There are three interleaved storylines. One has Warren Ellis engineering the soundtrack for this movie in Paris and is essentially padding. I guess it's sorta fun hearing him speak French and wondering what the sound engineer makes of his Australianisms. And hear him layering sounds, some of which reminded me of Ben Frost. Another lays out the purpose of the Ellis Park home for trafficked animals, perhaps too briefly. (The park of that name in Adelaide (where the best speed in Australia may or may not be sold) and the famous rugby field in Johannesburg do not feature. Kurzel shows that he is no David Attenborough, or Errol Morris for that matter.) The main thread tracks Ellis on a visit to Victoria, presumably in 2023 as he was recording Love Changes Everything (2024) with the Dirty Three, released after their Australian tour in 2024, through to a visit to the titular park in Sumatra and the passing of his father in December 2023.
The early camerawork during the return to Ballarat was not promising but at some point things settled down enough for me to enjoy Ellis's unaccompanied violin in spaces that had meant something to him as a young man. I'd forgotten that he'd released a memoir (Nina Simone's Chewing Gum (2021)) and therefore lacked the context that may have made that motif more significant than twee.
The homepage for Ellis Park Wildlife Sanctuary suggests that Nick Cave is also putting in some cash (personally and via their Goliath Enterprises vehicle). Cave himself appears but only in archival footage. No other musician speaks except Ellis's father; Ellis tells us that his father wrote songs by opening a book of poetry and singing it to whatever chords he was playing, a process that is clearly inapplicable to Ellis's wordless music. At some point Ellis says to the prime motive force for the Park, Femke den Haas, that he doesn't want to be "that person" (elsewhere: Bono) but it struck me that throughout the whole movie, he is that person. This indulgence is smothered by worthiness and redeemed by Ellis's ability and willingness to trust and muddle forward, and be increasingly open about himself. Even so I was looking at my watch after the first hour.
I avoided the coverage before I saw it. Luke Buckmaster saw it at MIFF 2024. He seems to get (but doesn't spell out) the Heart of Darkness aspect of the journey to Sumatra. Indigo Bailey talked with Ellis recently. He might be right that cynicism doesn't get you anywhere. Andy Hazel was on the shoot (?) and I'd've preferred to have seen what he wrote about. Andrew Dominik on Ellis: "He appears to be letting it all hang out, but he’s not really telling you anything about himself." Kirsten Krauth: the through line is trauma. It could've should've been Fitzcarraldo (1982) but Kurzel is not Herzog either. The filmmaking process was somewhat therapeutic for Ellis but did not prevent a year-long breakdown between initial shooting and completion. An incomplete portrait. Jason Di Rosso interviewed Kurzel as did many others. And so on.
