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Once labelled the 'most dangerous band' in the world, Mutiny in Heaven tells the story of The Birthday Party.
The reference point: the hellscapes of Hieronymus Bosch. The location: a garbage dump in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn. The occasion: a music video for libidinally cacophonous ensemble The Birthday Party.
The call to participate had been issued over local radio and via flyers at the Crystal Ballroom, then the sticky epicentre of the city's post-punk boom: "Come dressed for a New Year's Eve party in HELL." In addition to the throngs of gothic youth that turned up, there were psychiatric patients bussed in for the occasion, a crucifix, pigs' heads mounted on sticks, a live goat. Open flames illuminated the abject carnival, burning unchecked trails through the detritus. At the centre of it all was a wild-eyed stick insect of a man, cavorting his way through the squalid morass — the de-Boschery, if you will. The young Nick Cave appears naked except for a loin cloth, his pasty chest emblazoned with the words "PORCA DIO" — "God is a pig". Even more alarming is the fact he is unshod.It's a scene that would have set any OHS officer to weeping — the police and fire brigade must have been aghast when they got called in — just as surely as it would serve to ignite the dark passions of many a disaffected teen who saw the end result on TV. The music video for Nick the Stripper — a honking, poisonous cut from the band's 1981 Prayers on Fire LP — is the only one the band made in its six-year lifespan . Decades later, it remains an electrifying spectacle, still exuding a vital danger, even — make that especially — when viewed alongside the output of more contemporary shock-rockers. The Paul Goldman-directed clip is justly afforded the status of set piece in Mutiny in Heaven, a heady, collage-like documentary homage to the band. Director Ian White cedes the screen to the Nick the Stripper video for its full duration; it acts as a kind of unofficial header for the film's middle section, in which the band — comprised of Cave, guitarists Rowland S. Howard and Mick Harvey, bassist Tracey Pew and drummer Phill Calvert — hit their distinctive musical stride.It was after relocating to London that this gaggle of ghoulish larrikins, still in their early 20s, landed on the deranged, wonkily propulsive sound that would be their claim to music history, and pushed their live shows to the point of volatile confrontations. Mutiny in Heaven opens with an instructive piece of footage from a live show, in which Cave – moody blue under the stage lights, black hair sweat-slicked into a cockscomb — admonishes a battered audience member: "The front row is not for the fragile, my dear," he drawls. White maintains a tight focus on his subject, keeping the gushing, retroactive assessments to a cool minimum.His interest is rather in crafting an immersive account of the band's heroin- and liquor-riddled rise and subsequent fallout — as told largely by the former members themselves, bar Pew, who died in 1986. Nick Cave has released an enormous volume of material over the years — the guy loves to work — so narrowing down a few records isn't easy.If only, say, the Thurston Moore quote could be swapped out for some insights from Genevieve McGuckin and the late Anita Lane, or the other girlfriends slash collaborators who went with the band to London, where the entire gang was confined to the one dire squat. In its design, Mutiny in Heaven approaches, but doesn't quite achieve, the rigour and elegance of Todd Haynes's 2021 Velvet Underground documentary. Where Haynes illustrated The Velvets' story through the avant-garde cinema of their day, White sometimes veers a little corny, prone to falling back on bits of stock footage of crows and cats overlaid with a scratchy analogue film filter.Mutiny in Heaven does, however, proffer a trove of archival footage, as supplemented by animated sequences adapted from the drawings of Reinhard Kleist — author of 2017 graphic novel Nick Cave: Mercy on Me, rendered in striking black-and-white — that prove a cut above the standard.White's iris shot-like approach to The Birthday Party means that the film works to complement, rather than compete with, Richard Lowenstein and Lynn-Maree Milburn's 2011 documentary about Rowland S. Howard, Autoluminescent . It also mirrors a prevailing theme of isolation. Harvey explains that the band's London stint proved inspiring only in the negative: They were penniless, near-friendless and dismayed to discover a music scene that was almost entirely, as Howard elegantly puts it, "bilge". The Party was racked by malnutrition and spiralling heroin addictions. The hostility of their sound and stage presence blossomed in response to the hostility of their environment. Mutiny in Heaven slouches doggedly toward the catharsis, and the majesty, of this theatre of bad vibes.'He's always changing': Nick Cave and Warren Ellis are subjects of joyous new music documentaryA glimpse into Nick Cave's wild St Kilda daysBody found in search for man wanted over woman's 'horrific' death at Sydney schoolGaza health ministry issues document after Biden and Israel cast doubt on death toll'Full-on flames and black smoke' in solar system a reminder for home owners' regular maintenanceNSW approves aerial shooting to reduce feral horse numbers in Kosciuszko National ParkUS economy continues to run hot while Europe finally holds ratesThe cyclone that just hit Vanuatu was the earliest Southern Hemisphere category 5 ever recorded. Here's why'Mind-blowingly good': How a Manchester City tactical decision is paying off for the MatildasWhy isn't the Israeli army invading Gaza? One of the major reasons is QatarWhere to now for Indigenous rights? 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