It is easy for Nick Cave fans to feel inundated with new material these days. Beyond an upcoming US tour with Colin Greenwood and in-store appearances to support Faith, Hope and Carnage, an interview book he published last year with journalist Sean O’Hagan, those who keep up with all things Cave can also buy the recently released live album, Australian Carnage – Live at the Sydney Opera House. There is also The Red Hand Files, a website Cave maintains where he answers questions semi-weekly from fans about love, religion, tolerance and grief. The extra wealthy can buy items like an angel charm, pencils adorned with Cave lyrics and a T-shirt emblazoned with “Suck My Dick” from his boutique online emporium, Cave Things. You can also watch three documentaries about the making of Cave’s past four albums, listen to the soundtrack work he and Warren Ellis have created together, see a Nick Cave ephemera exhibit at a museum in Montreal or buy the deluxe hardcover book based on the event if you missed it. It all can feel exhausting, especially for longtime fans.
But how many of the fans who discovered Cave in the past few decades know about his work in Birthday Party, one of the most outrageous bands to take the stage in the early ‘80s? Since no stone is left unturned in the Nick Cave story, it is surprising that Mutiny in Heaven: The Birthday Party, a documentary directed by Ian White, took so long to appear. Those who have read Cave’s book or read Boy on Fire – Mark Mordue’s biography of pre-fame Cave, or Nick Cave: Mercy on Me – Reinhard Kleist’s graphic novel about the singer and his past, know the deal. The Birthday Party — featuring Cave, Mick Harvey, Tracy Pew, Phill Calvert and Roland S. Howard — is Australia’s most notorious post-punk band, known for explosive, violent and often transcendent concerts. Active from 1977 to 1983, the group helped launch Cave towards superstardom, despite the destruction it left in its wake.
Using a plethora of revelatory archival footage, White tells a brisk but complete history of the band beginning with the members meeting at a school in Australia and forming The Boys Next Door. It is a warts-and-all depiction and White is not shy when examining the group’s prolific drug use, destructive tendencies and hedonistic lifestyle. Via live video, cartoon recreation, stills and the occasional talking head, White follows the band from Australia to London to Berlin to its dissolution.
Most of the story is told by all the band members except Pew, who died in 1986 following an epileptic fit at the age of 28. However, all the narration appears to come from old interviews, including Howard who passed in in 2009. All the modern footage of Cave comes from his porn mustache era of the late 2000s. It is perplexing that none of the surviving members of the group gave updated interviews for the documentary or why it took so long to make Mutiny in Heaven. So, in that aspect, the film feels a bit cobbled together.
For the unfamiliar, learning about the power and the fury of the Birthday Party is essential. White does include the “Nick the Stripper” video in its entirety, which is amazing but also a strange choice in terms of slowing down the somewhat rapid-fire flow of the documentary. But for a band committed to the unconventional as the Birthday Party, Mutiny in Heaven belies its mythos in its conventionality. For Cave completists, this is another thing to collect, albeit from an era that the singer himself does not frequently explore these days.
Photo courtesy of Cargo Film & Releasing
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