Highly Recommended
An intimate and floating portrait of an artist filled with the voices of friends and family that builds on Lowenstein’s previous work without retreading existing ground.
If anyone was going to make a career-spanning documentary about Michael Hutchence, it was bound to be Richard Lowenstein. Apart from directing over a dozen INXS music videos, he helmed the cult classic Dogs in Space (1986) and the retrospective documentary We’re Livin’ on Dog Food (2009), both of which featured the singer in prominent roles.
Lowenstein doesn’t recover much of this ground in MYSTIFY: MICHAEL HUTCHENCE, a document of the 37 years that the rock star and passed through this mortal coil. Using a combination of concert footage, rare home movies, music, and interviews with people who knew him best, Lowenstein gives us a collage of a life.
Opening with concert footage of a massive stadium gig, Lowenstein – along with editors Lynn-Maree Milburn and Tayler Martin – refuses to stick to a linear structure. Cutting back and forth between his earliest childhood memories to moments at the height of INXS fandom, even ardent fans may be pleased to see the sheer amount of archival footage that Lowenstein has managed to cut into a lean running time.
The music will be familiar, but it is used only sparingly to underline certain moments in his life. For the rest of the film, we are treated to an oral history from managers, producers, ex-girlfriends, and family. Lowenstein has managed to get folks like Chris Bailey (The Saints), Jenny Morris, Bono, Helena Christensen, and even Kylie Minogue to reflect on Hutchence’s life. With the latter, we see some of the most intimate home footage of the film, a bubble of happiness in the life of an often troubled artist.
Some may find the approach too fragmented, but as the narrative goes on it fits the profile of its subject. In Lowenstein’s history, Hutchence’s turning point came during an accident in France (he was dating Christensen at the time), resulting in a delayed diagnosis of brain damage. It is used to explain the bipolarity of his behaviour in later years, increased dependence on drugs, and various affairs he had.
Following his union with Paula Yates, and the the highly publicised courtroom dramas with Bob Geldof, the last part of the film attempts to explain his death at the Ritz-Carlton. The final moments of the film give us an almost minute-by-minute analysis of the events leading up to his apparent suicide. Yet if anything can be learned from this drifting portrait, it’s that it’s impossible to capture what’s going on in the mind of any human.
2019 | Australia | DIRECTOR: Richard Lowenstein | WRITERS: Richard Lowenstein | CAST: Michael Hutchence, Helena Christensen, Kylie Minogue | DISTRIBUTOR: Madman Films (AUS)| RUNNING TIME: 104 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 6 June 2019 (SFF), 4 July 2019 (AUS)
