In this interview with Ellis Park director Justin Kurzel, he tells us about Warren Ellis, making his first documentary, creativity, and more.
It’s been a busy year for Justin Kurzel. The acclaimed director of the likes of Snowtown and Nitram has returned to the festival circuit with two films in one year. His domestic terrorist thriller The Order played at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals, but his second film, Ellis Park, is a very different beast.
Ellis Park marks Kurzel’s first foray into documentary filmmaking, and he has chosen an excellent subject. The musician and composer Warren Ellis is beloved by legions of fans as a member of the Dirty Three and the Bad Seeds. Outside his work with the bands, he has released a solo album, composed scores for many films (many alongside collaborator Nick Cave), and published a memoir. Ellis Park focuses on his sponsorship of a wildlife sanctuary in Sumatra, and documents his first visit there, surveying the great work done by its director Femke den Haas and her colleagues.
We meet Kurzel ahead of the film’s first screening at the BFI London Film Festival, having successfully premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival in August. Read the interview below!
Justin Kurzel on making two films in a year
You’ve been a busy man lately. How was it making two films in one year?
Justin Kurzel: I was really worried about it, but it actually was fantastic. It was really amazing, how the two of them spoke to each other. The editor of Ellis Park (Nick Fenton) was also the editor of The Order. There was something about doing the documentary that was so freeing and spontaneous, and you can really kind of control it. It was very liberating. There was a sort of spirit about that definitely brought into the film. Compared to The Order, I could just relax a little bit more, and trust things a little bit more, and allow myself to be more in the present. It was really nice to be able to do it. [The two films] overlapped at times, but they also had their own independent moments.
This is your first documentary. Have you always wanted to make one?
J.K.: No, I was completely spontaneous. I hadn’t really thought about it. I’m a huge fan of documentaries; I probably watch more documentaries than I do fiction. I was in Cannes, and I met up with Warren. He was there with The Velvet Queen, and I was there with Nitram; we just started talking about what we’ve been doing during Covid. He was really prolific: he’d done some albums and soundtracks, and written a book.
Then he said, “I’ve got this incredible animal sanctuary that I’ve financially supported, but also have developed with this extraordinary team”. He said, “I want to go there, and I want to kind of take this eight foot sculpture of Nina Simone’s gum, and row it down this river in a Fitzcarraldo sort of way, and go to the park for the first time!” I just thought it was so crazy, wonderfully eccentric and incredible that I said, “I’d love to make a film about that.” That just grew from there, but it grew in the right way. We talked a lot about it, and I had many, many conversations with Warren over the phone. He’s an incredible conversationalist. He thought it should just be this fluid, ongoing conversation about all sorts of things, but at the core of it was him arriving at the park and seeing it for the first time, and understanding what Femke and these amazing people and these extraordinary animals were.
How did you plan for Ellis Park? Was Warren active in the planning?
J.K.: It was very organic. It wasn’t like I set out to make a documentary about this. Suddenly, I was in Sumatra, and I had a camera, and we were doing it. Every time I had an idea, the film itself really hated it. It was like, “I don’t want you to place anything on this. I want this to be a fluid present sort of thing. Just being there in conversation and listening, rather than sort of having 100 ideas that you need to do during the day. We’d just ask, “What are we doing today? What are we? What are we saving? What are we? What are we repairing? Who are we visiting?” Then Warren would take out his violin, and he’d start playing, and he keeps on playing. It’s really interesting. It’s obviously the beginning of a piece and song. I would sort of say to him “Is it?”, and he’d go, “Yeah, there’s something here.” Suddenly, we were recording all the different stems of it, and then suddenly there was a song when we got to the studio in Paris.
It was this lovely, evolving kind of project that felt like we were traveling with this amazing charismatic and interesting man, and being brought into these worlds through his point of view. But at the same time, it was this sort of wonderful roving conversation about life, art and creating things about empathy, dignity and death, and I love that. I love the ease of that. It’s definitely the easiest film of mine to watch, because I’ve done some really heavy stuff, and I love the effortlessness of it, the gentleness of it. It was really refreshing for me.
Justin Kurzel on Warren Ellis
What was your relationship to Warren and his work before meeting him?
Justin Kurzel: Growing up in Australia in the ‘90s, the Dirty Three were a huge influence for a lot of artists and filmmakers. Their music was quite transcending and then, obviously, with his collaborations with Nick, that kind of inspiration just kept on going.Warren is very film-literate. He sees a lot of films. He works with and is friends with some fantastic different directors. He thinks like a director when you talk to him about films and about music. It was lovely that we eventually bumped into each other. He liked my first film, and we realized that we were very similar. We were both brought up in the country and there was a similar world that we came from, in those early years. He’s ridiculously funny and incredibly likable, and really smart and wise. He’s just effortless to be around. That felt great; it meant I wasn’t pushing something or having to try to work out how to tailor anything for Warren. We would keep on talking when the camera was not on for hours, and I’d think “We should have kept the camera going through that.” It was very organic. It was like making a film with a dear friend.
Was there anything he didn’t want to talk about?
J.K.: Not really. I just knew when he felt like there was something that he wanted to talk about, and when he didn’t. I don’t think we ever really sat down and said anything was out of bounds. I said to him, “I won’t put anything in that you don’t want, and you get a final cut over that.” That was also sort of part of the process, to give him the freedom to be able to talk about something without sort of feeling like it was suddenly locked into the film.
Justin Kurzel on the making of Ellis Park
In some scenes, Warren tries to bring you into the frame. Did you intend to appear in the film?
Justin Kurzel: Any chance he would get, Warren would drag me into the frame, and I desperately didn’t want to be in it. I look terrible at the moment! I just don’t really want to be in, but he was right to drag me in, because I got to feel what it was like for him, and really understand that. No matter how much I tried to get myself out of the frame, he would bring me into it. There was a lot of me in it. It was becoming a bit of a buddy film, and we had to go back on that a bit, just to allow Nick to choose what he wanted to focus on, to see what were the things that were sort of speaking to him in the edit. I do think that helped, Warren going, “If I’m doing this, then you’re doing it. You can’t be in and out of the frame.” I think that helped with him feeling like he had a partner in it, rather than him just being a subject.
Were the scenes of Warren playing and rehearsing music as off-the-cuff as the scenes of dialogue?
J.K.: We’d be laughing about the most stupid thing, and then suddenly he’d just start playing this extraordinary, sophisticated piece of music that was so deeply, deeply emotive, and had a sort of gravitas to it. It was just so compelling, and then he’d finish it and make a joke! I gotta say, there’s something about Warren that is really the best of Australia. I think what we’re great at culturally is, we’re able to kind of have humor in our work and wit, and for it to feel dangerous, and for it to also be sophisticated and ambitious. There’s a whole lot of elements there that I feel are in Warren. He is one of our greatest artists. Hopefully that’s on display in the film.
Justin Kurzel on creativity
Did you do anything to differentiate this documentary from others we get about musicians?
Justin Kurzel: I just wanted to feel a bit like a fly on the wall. I feel as though the mystique of what someone does as an artist, the reverence of it, is not as important as the feeling that you are watching and being present with someone that’s just going about their work. It was really important to us that it not feel overly self-important. We wanted to demystify a lot of the creative process and what the act of creation is. I was really fascinated by Warren’s father because he’s a songwriter. I loved the way he would talk about how lyrics and pieces of music would come to him, and this little voice that would sort of tap him. He felt as though there was this spirit or something speaking out of the shadows and giving him these little bits. I thought that was so interesting as to where ideas come from, where creative instincts come from.
Did you see the same creative spirit in Warren?
J.K.: Warren works the same way. We would just be sitting there on the balcony in Sumatra, playing something while the mosque would be going on in the background. The primates would be singing, and he’d start playing, and you’d start to hear something form, and you’d go, “Oh, wow!” at this alchemy of all these things that have created something here. So much about what’s happening right at the moment is about being really present in it, rather than overthinking something, or procrastinating on it. One of the things I learned about creativity that was really inspiring to me was this central idea of momentum. To keep moving forward, to keep reaching for ideas, to not stop, to not procrastinate, to not think too much about it. You have to trust the momentum of something, that it will form ideas, and that your instincts will take over. That was something really special that I connected to, particularly from Warren’s father.
Clearly, Warren found inspiration in Ellis Park.
J.K.: To be honest, I think even the park was hugely creative. There was just an unbelievable momentum in that place. Every single day there was something to do, something to save, something to look after, something to release. It was just this continuous whirlwind of activity, and it was quite wonderful to be caught up in. There was no sitting around, waiting for the animals to wake up. It had a real energy to it. It was really great.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Ellis Park celebrated its World Premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on Saturday October 19, 2024 15:40 at Prince Charles Cinema.
Header credits: GoodThing Productions / Dave Bedrosian, Alamy
