ACUTE MISFORTUNE
****
Director: Thomas M. Wright
Screenwriters: Thomas M. Wright and Erik Jensen, based on Jensen’s biography Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen.
Principal cast:
Daniel Henshall
Toby Wallace
Gillian Jones
Geneviève Lemon
Max Cullen
Country: Australia
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 90 mins.
Australian release date: 16 May 2019
Previewed at: Randwick Ritz Cinema, Sydney, on 13 May 2019.
Actor turned director Thomas M. Wright’s first feature, Acute Misfortune, based on a biography by Erik Jensen of Australian artist Adam Cullen, won The Age Critics’ Prize in last year’s Melbourne International film Festival and could well garner further critics’ awards at overseas film festivals but, commercially speaking, will probably fly under the radar at the box office here in its homeland. It’s a sad prediction to make - and hopefully word of mouth will prove it wrong - because this fine piece of filmmaking deserves to be seen widely, despite it only having a limited release season accompanied by a series of special events. In Sydney, it launched with a fascinating Q&A session with the director and producer (Robert Connolly) at the Randwick Ritz cinema, hosted by Joel Edgerton. In other words, you may have to hunt it down but it is worth making the effort because it is one of the best Australian films of the year to date.
“Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know” was an expression first coined to describe the poet Lord Byron but it would be appropriate to use it to describe the Archibald Prize-winning artist Adam Cullen (Daniel Henshall). Cullen was diagnosed with a bipolar disorder which he seemed to treat with a regimen of illicit drugs and alcohol; after graduating from the City Art Institute (now UNSW’s Faculty of Art and Design), where he became known for dragging around a dead pig’s head attached to his ankle, he went on to a controversial career that often drew on dead animals, violent images and crime figures as his subjects. Upon reading a profile of himself by Jensen in The Sydney Morning Herald, Cullen contacted the then 19-year-old journalist (who went on to found The Saturday Paper) and told him that a major publisher had commissioned his biography and he had selected him to author it. It was a lie but it led to the establishment of a strange, if somewhat abusive relationship between the writer and the artist that lasted for four intense years. Jensen (an excellent performance by Toby Wallace) finds that his subject is an egotistical bully and a deeply troubled man, yet one who can be charming and capable of acts of kindness. Still, it seems that, for the most part, Jensen is abused and mistreated by Cullen, even being shot by him and, once, deliberately pushed off the back of his motorbike. This ‘odd couple’ association continued until the artist’s premature death at the age of 46.
Daniel Henshall is positively scary as the explosive Cullen; if his performance can be faulted it’s only because at times it’s a bit too close to his portrayal of the serial killer John Bunting in Snowtown. Watch for his name in this year’s acting awards season. Wallace, too, provides a terrific, nuanced delivery of the young Jensen, who’s clearly put off balance by Cullen but is clever enough to recognise that there’s something significant happening in front of him, although capturing it is akin to nailing down mercury. Acute Misfortune was filmed in the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales and these locations are beautifully caught in a classic 4:3 Academy ratio frame by Stefan Duscio’s and Germain McMicking’s cinematography.
Made for a low budget of $1.5 million, debut director Wright has done a brilliant job of capturing the complexities of both Cullen and his relationship with Jensen. The director/co-writer says that their relationship was one “of abandon, warmth and intensity – and of control, tension and violence,” and that he was “trying to write the truth of another person.” Co-scripter Jensen adds, “Watching this book become a film has been one of the great privileges of my career. I started writing this story when I was 19, staying in Adam's spare room on the promise of a book contract. I stayed because Adam fascinated me. Writing the screenplay with Thomas M. Wright was just as illuminating, in some ways, as those years spent interviewing Adam.” Together, they’ve painted a warts-and-all portrait of a pretty unlikable, driven man and, to their credit, they haven’t tried to excuse his behaviour with the virtuosity of his art, to say that the end somehow justifies the means. Acute Misfortune turns the typical tortured artist biopic on its head.
Screenwriters: Thomas M. Wright and Erik Jensen, based on Jensen’s biography Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen.
Principal cast:
Daniel Henshall
Toby Wallace
Gillian Jones
Geneviève Lemon
Max Cullen
Country: Australia
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 90 mins.
Australian release date: 16 May 2019
Previewed at: Randwick Ritz Cinema, Sydney, on 13 May 2019.
Actor turned director Thomas M. Wright’s first feature, Acute Misfortune, based on a biography by Erik Jensen of Australian artist Adam Cullen, won The Age Critics’ Prize in last year’s Melbourne International film Festival and could well garner further critics’ awards at overseas film festivals but, commercially speaking, will probably fly under the radar at the box office here in its homeland. It’s a sad prediction to make - and hopefully word of mouth will prove it wrong - because this fine piece of filmmaking deserves to be seen widely, despite it only having a limited release season accompanied by a series of special events. In Sydney, it launched with a fascinating Q&A session with the director and producer (Robert Connolly) at the Randwick Ritz cinema, hosted by Joel Edgerton. In other words, you may have to hunt it down but it is worth making the effort because it is one of the best Australian films of the year to date.
“Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know” was an expression first coined to describe the poet Lord Byron but it would be appropriate to use it to describe the Archibald Prize-winning artist Adam Cullen (Daniel Henshall). Cullen was diagnosed with a bipolar disorder which he seemed to treat with a regimen of illicit drugs and alcohol; after graduating from the City Art Institute (now UNSW’s Faculty of Art and Design), where he became known for dragging around a dead pig’s head attached to his ankle, he went on to a controversial career that often drew on dead animals, violent images and crime figures as his subjects. Upon reading a profile of himself by Jensen in The Sydney Morning Herald, Cullen contacted the then 19-year-old journalist (who went on to found The Saturday Paper) and told him that a major publisher had commissioned his biography and he had selected him to author it. It was a lie but it led to the establishment of a strange, if somewhat abusive relationship between the writer and the artist that lasted for four intense years. Jensen (an excellent performance by Toby Wallace) finds that his subject is an egotistical bully and a deeply troubled man, yet one who can be charming and capable of acts of kindness. Still, it seems that, for the most part, Jensen is abused and mistreated by Cullen, even being shot by him and, once, deliberately pushed off the back of his motorbike. This ‘odd couple’ association continued until the artist’s premature death at the age of 46.
Daniel Henshall is positively scary as the explosive Cullen; if his performance can be faulted it’s only because at times it’s a bit too close to his portrayal of the serial killer John Bunting in Snowtown. Watch for his name in this year’s acting awards season. Wallace, too, provides a terrific, nuanced delivery of the young Jensen, who’s clearly put off balance by Cullen but is clever enough to recognise that there’s something significant happening in front of him, although capturing it is akin to nailing down mercury. Acute Misfortune was filmed in the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales and these locations are beautifully caught in a classic 4:3 Academy ratio frame by Stefan Duscio’s and Germain McMicking’s cinematography.
Made for a low budget of $1.5 million, debut director Wright has done a brilliant job of capturing the complexities of both Cullen and his relationship with Jensen. The director/co-writer says that their relationship was one “of abandon, warmth and intensity – and of control, tension and violence,” and that he was “trying to write the truth of another person.” Co-scripter Jensen adds, “Watching this book become a film has been one of the great privileges of my career. I started writing this story when I was 19, staying in Adam's spare room on the promise of a book contract. I stayed because Adam fascinated me. Writing the screenplay with Thomas M. Wright was just as illuminating, in some ways, as those years spent interviewing Adam.” Together, they’ve painted a warts-and-all portrait of a pretty unlikable, driven man and, to their credit, they haven’t tried to excuse his behaviour with the virtuosity of his art, to say that the end somehow justifies the means. Acute Misfortune turns the typical tortured artist biopic on its head.