Mutiny in Heaven: The Birthday Party – REVIEW

After 40 plus years few bands retain credibility, but one that shoots to the top of the list is the Birthday Party.

Their brief existence flowered in the early eighties and travelled from Melbourne to London and then Berlin before being extinguished by a collision of grinding poverty, lack of acceptance, drug addiction and fatally, creative differences.

The story of how five Melbourne private school friends became one of the most seminally potent bands to ever emerge from Australia is now told in their own words in Mutiny in Heaven:The Birthday Party, a feature length film that is as powerful and explosive as the band at their best.

Co-producer and director Ian White said: “I just wanted to bottle some of the energy of the band in the film by creating a dangerous world and then drop the audience into that world, rather than it being a nostalgic look back to a dark past.”

White came to the project via his relationship with Birthday Party guitarist and writer Rowland S Howard and co-producer Lindsay Gravina, who had worked together on a retrospective project in the early 2000s before abandoning it.

“A couple of years ago Lindsay asked me to drop by his studio and Mick (Harvey) was there and we chatted about what could be done with the material that had been collected.”

White took away a hard drive that included around three hours of interviews with the now deceased Howard, and retuned with some cut sequences.

“Mick then shared that with the other band members and I laid out a creative vision for the film and we were on,” White said.

It was surprising because the band had been approached many times to make a film and they had always declined.

“The time seemed to be right.”

One of the biggest surprises in the 99 minute film is the amount of archival footage, audio and stills covering performances and recording sessions from an ever increasingly chaotic band.

There is even a besuited Nick Cave showing his couch surfing space in a Berlin pad.

“We approached the National Film and Sound Archives and the Performing Arts Museum in Melbourne and the footage came in every form you could imagine, from VHS dubs to pristine 16mm film,” White said.

A lot of work went into the pacing of the film, which throughout the film’s duration maintains the energy and dangerous frenzy of the Birthday Party at their best.

“The band’s career was really rocket propelled, they really hurtled through a lot and covered an enormous amount of ground visually, sonically and creatively,” White said.

“We wanted to catch that energy and the feeling of the relentless pace at which the band lived.”

Coupled with the crisp look of the film is the sonic brilliance of the soundtrack, which is sourced from multiple sources.

“One of the great joys of making this film was being able to revisit a lot of live tapes which have never been heard before and going back to the masters or the multi-tracks” White said.

“Listening to the Birthday Party in both the studio and the live performances, they haven’t dated at all.

“They were never lured into wanting to sound like an early ‘80s band and the music is timeless.”

Another strength of Mutiny in Heaven is that the narrative largely unfolds through the voices of the band members.

“Phil Calvert said early on that if Bono or Henry Rollins are in the film then to count him out,” White said.

Sharing an executive production credit with Mick Harvey is the illustrious German producer Wim Wenders, who, a few years after the demise of the Birthday Party would feature Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in his 1987 masterpiece Wings of Desire.

“He was a fan of the band in their heyday back in Berlin, and has remained friends with various band members,” White said.

Mutiny in Heaven is currently screening in 56 US cities to good attendances and glowing reviews.

The Australian theatrical roll out begins on October 21st at the Adelaide Festival, before moving to other capital cities and selected regional centres.

From November 2

Cremorne Orpheum, Randwick Ritz, Our Golden Age.