“When Bacchus Marsh lost the lion park they ripped the guts out of it!”

I was going to do the Q&A along with the review but as I was starting a new job the day after the screening I left my notes until the Monday night and could not really read them by the time I got to them, will go over some of them in the review at least.

Warren has said pretty much the same in every interview so I don’t really need to repeat it here. The purpose of the documentary is to raise awareness for the animal sanctuary and they just happened to have some stuff about his life in it too. He said the movie was more like a sequel to his book Nina Simone’s Gum as they originally planned to make a one metre tall statue of the gum and transport it overland to the sanctuary but it never worked out.

They did get to film in Ballarat and show Warren playing his violin in several places that were important to his development. His dad was such as sweet guy and had the classic line about watching the film crew in case they stole something. It was pretty hard to see the scene later in the movie where you see his remains in the plastic container and Warren reads the letter from the crematorium. I did not think he would tour after that but still managed it.

This must have been shot not long before the recent Australian tour as they were still practicing it seems. Not sure how long post production takes but the recording shown in the film is the limited edition LP that is being sold to raise funds for the animal sanctuary. I would have normally bought a copy but as I said I only just started a new job the day after.

The second half of the film is Warren finally going to the sanctuary and meeting Femke den Haas and the team who ran it. Warren said in the Q&A they did have to construct that sequence as the monkeys actually hated him and attacked on site. You don’t want to be like the movie ROAR where they tried to promote animal protection by showing the most brutal attacks on the cast.

Warren also said there was another version of the film that was almost a comedy and you can still see some of it with the wisecracks between the director and subject. I would have liked to see the director play the violin as he wanted him to in the theatre in Ballarat.

It was good they had the music stuff in the start of the documentary to entice people into the animal conservation part of the film. It can be a bit tough to just promote a charity without something else to draw people in as there are a lot of worthy causes these days. Nick Cave believes in the cause and made an unspecified contribution to the park according to Warren.

I would consider donating to the charity in the future so it convinced me. The test is if it is going to play with people who are not already fans of Warren Ellis’ work with the Dirty Three and Nick Cave.

Rating: 5/5

Film details:

Director: Justin Kurzel

Producer: Nick Batzias, Charlotte Wheaton

Screenwriter: Justin Kurzel, Nick Fenton

Cinematographer: Germain McMicking

Composer: Warren Ellis

Editor: Nick Fenton

Key Cast: French Stewart

Featured Subjects: Warren Ellis, Femke den Haas

Company Credits

Distributor: Madman Entertainment

Length: 105 mins

Country: English, Indonesian

Genre: Documentary

Viewer Advice: Contains depictions of violence towards animals.