Cult filmmaker meets cult musician in a documentary that is hard to pin down
ELLIS PARK ★★★
(M) 105 minutes
There's a limit to what a film can tell you about anyone in a couple of hours, but where the musician Warren Ellis is concerned, I'll venture this much: part of him wants to hide, while another part wants to be noticed (and perhaps to be noticed hiding).
That ambivalence is apparent in his frenzied way of playing the violin with his back to the audience as part of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds or Dirty Three.
In Justin Kurzel's intriguing though not especially coherent documentary, he's mostly a solo act. Still, he remains torn between candour and concealment – as we can see from the moment he appears, a skinny, swaying apparition whose swagman's beard, aviator sunglasses and rock star jewellery all form part of the most eye-catching kind of disguise.
Ellis' contradictions must be partly what attracted Kurzel, who's better known for his fiction features, though he has a recurring interest in 'true stories' (sometimes grim ones, as in Snowtown and Nitram).
The film is wilfully hard to pin down in its own right, employing some of the visual tricks Kurzel has used elsewhere to induce a feeling of instability, such as having backgrounds slide in and out of focus.
It's not a conventional music documentary: Ellis is often shown playing, but rarely in public, and there's no attempt to cover the whole of his career, which took off in Melbourne in the early '90s. Nor do we see a great deal of his everyday life in Paris, where he's lived for decades.
Nor is this a straightforward environmentalist tract, although the title derives from the Sumatran wildlife sanctuary Ellis co-founded in 2021, allowing animals rescued from traffickers to live out what remains of their lives in peace.
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Cult filmmaker meets cult musician in a documentary that is hard to pin down
ELLIS PARK ★★★ (M) 105 minutes There's a limit to what a film can tell you about anyone in a couple of hours, but where the musician Warren Ellis is concerned, I'll venture this much: part of him wants to hide, while another part wants to be noticed (and perhaps to be noticed hiding). That ambivalence is apparent in his frenzied way of playing the violin with his back to the audience as part of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds or Dirty Three. In Justin Kurzel's intriguing though not especially coherent documentary, he's mostly a solo act. Still, he remains torn between candour and concealment – as we can see from the moment he appears, a skinny, swaying apparition whose swagman's beard, aviator sunglasses and rock star jewellery all form part of the most eye-catching kind of disguise. Ellis' contradictions must be partly what attracted Kurzel, who's better known for his fiction features, though he has a recurring interest in 'true stories' (sometimes grim ones, as in Snowtown and Nitram). The film is wilfully hard to pin down in its own right, employing some of the visual tricks Kurzel has used elsewhere to induce a feeling of instability, such as having backgrounds slide in and out of focus. It's not a conventional music documentary: Ellis is often shown playing, but rarely in public, and there's no attempt to cover the whole of his career, which took off in Melbourne in the early '90s. Nor do we see a great deal of his everyday life in Paris, where he's lived for decades. Nor is this a straightforward environmentalist tract, although the title derives from the Sumatran wildlife sanctuary Ellis co-founded in 2021, allowing animals rescued from traffickers to live out what remains of their lives in peace.
The Age
11-06-2025
- The Age
Cult filmmaker meets cult musician in a documentary that is hard to pin down
ELLIS PARK ★★★ (M) 105 minutes There's a limit to what a film can tell you about anyone in a couple of hours, but where the musician Warren Ellis is concerned, I'll venture this much: part of him wants to hide, while another part wants to be noticed (and perhaps to be noticed hiding). That ambivalence is apparent in his frenzied way of playing the violin with his back to the audience as part of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds or Dirty Three. In Justin Kurzel's intriguing though not especially coherent documentary, he's mostly a solo act. Still, he remains torn between candour and concealment – as we can see from the moment he appears, a skinny, swaying apparition whose swagman's beard, aviator sunglasses and rock star jewellery all form part of the most eye-catching kind of disguise. Ellis' contradictions must be partly what attracted Kurzel, who's better known for his fiction features, though he has a recurring interest in 'true stories' (sometimes grim ones, as in Snowtown and Nitram). The film is wilfully hard to pin down in its own right, employing some of the visual tricks Kurzel has used elsewhere to induce a feeling of instability, such as having backgrounds slide in and out of focus. It's not a conventional music documentary: Ellis is often shown playing, but rarely in public, and there's no attempt to cover the whole of his career, which took off in Melbourne in the early '90s. Nor do we see a great deal of his everyday life in Paris, where he's lived for decades. Nor is this a straightforward environmentalist tract, although the title derives from the Sumatran wildlife sanctuary Ellis co-founded in 2021, allowing animals rescued from traffickers to live out what remains of their lives in peace.
