Mystify: Michael Hutchence

For fans of Michael Hutchence and INXS, this exploratory documentary is a must. For those not familiar with the singer and performer, it will provide an interesting, sometimes disturbing, portrait of an artist, insecure in himself, talented in his singing and composition, a life ended prematurely.

Documentary and feature director, Richard Lowenstein (He Died with a Falafel in his Hand, Say a Little Prayer, In Bob We Trust) had worked with Michael Hutchence in his 1986 feature film about a commune of musicians, Dogs in Space. Which means that he had followed Hutchence in the 1980s and into the 1990s, until Hutchence’s death in 1997.

For those who like INXS, it is an opportunity to relive the story of the band, the different personalities, their different contributions to the music, to performance. There are their ups and downs in career, the ups and downs in friendship and relationships. And there are sequences of performance in many venues around the world. This documentary culminates in a performance of their hit, Mystify.

The film provides a substantial overview of Hutchence’s life and career, his relationship with his parents, their separation, his growing bond with his father, strong bond with his sister and ups and downs with his brother. There are the photos of his growing up, interviews with family and friends about his personality, shyness and diffidence, a growing transformation with his involvement with his band.

And, interestingly, the women with whom he had relationships are also interviewed to quite some extent. The outsider, he seems to begin an intense relationship and, then, suddenly move out of it, no real explanations offered, moving along to the next partner. In fact, this happens four times, including a relationship with Kylie Minogue (and quite an amount of film footage to illustrate it) as well as with model Helena Christensen (again film footage available).

There is also quite a lot of footage of Hutchence himself and quite an amount of footage attributed to him and his camera work. It illustrates the background of his life, time living in France, the international tours and success.

However, older audiences may remember his involvement in scandals in the 1990s, his relationship with Paula Yates, her work as an interviewer, then the personal bonding, her leaving her husband, Bob Geldof, her children, and the successive court cases about divorce and custody. There are no comments from Bob Geldof himself in this film.

Hutchence seems to have been preoccupied with the case, his relationship with Paula Yates, the birth of their daughter.

However, for outsiders at least, there is a revelation that Hutchence was involved in a fight with a taxi driver in Paris who punched him, Hutchence falling to the footpath, hitting his head with subsequent brain damage. This is explained in some detail, the loss of his olfactory sense and the consequences, the disconnect in areas of his brain, subsequent moodiness, bouts of depression. At the time of his death, he was beginning a tour of Australia in Sydney, in constant contact with what was going on in the British courts, and, suddenly, his being found hanged in his hotel room.

Whether an audience knows a great deal about Hutchence or does not know who is at all, they will respond to a very well constructed documentary, drawing on a great deal of visual sources, enabling the audience to associate Hutchence as a composer and artist, with growing sympathy for him as a disturbed human being.

Peter Malone MSC is an Associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting.

If you believe everything that you’re told in ‘Mystify’, then Michael Hutchence, the lead singer and co-writer of legendary Aussie rock act INXS, was a once in a generation gift to humankind. A cradle to grave doco, this tells Hutchence’s story through spoken interviews playing over a wealth of archival footage. While his story is somewhat interesting (presumably more so for Hutchence and INXS completionists), there’s not much to learned here that couldn’t be gleaned from reading the internet, nor is it particularly objective. Instead, its greatest strength is the great visuals that it assembles together from a range of sources, which capture the doco’s subject, his band and the era of their stardom with intimate detail. That said, ‘Mystify: Michael Hutchence’ is probably one best left for the presumably impressive number fans of its subject.

A host of voices take viewers through Michael’s upbringing and his introduction to the musical world, where his hard work and talent combined to quickly elevate his band, INXS, to the top of the Australian music scene and global stardom. Occasionally, particular events with their own mythic power in Michael’s story hijack the otherwise shaggy narrative, like his romance with Kylie Minogue, or his assault by a taxi driver in Copenhagen that caused significant brain damage and the personality shift that saw Hutchence start on the downward spiral that only ended with his suicide in 1997.

The names assembled to discuss the doco’s subject is impressive, including family members, band mates, ex-partners, managers, producers and more, not to mention Hutchence himself. They offer firsthand insights into the various aspects of his life and career that the film explores, though I would suggest that, having done my share of googling after watching the film, there is little insight here that target audiences (read: Hutchence and INXS fans) wouldn’t have already been able to find out elsewhere already. Some of its insights came as interesting news to me personally, like the connection drawn between Hutchence’s relationship with his mother and his desire for fame, though they would be old hat to anyone interested enough to read any one of the several books about the famous front man (including one apiece written by his brother Rhett and sister Tina).

Where the doco generates value is in its precious, dreamy visuals. Like the 2017 documentary ‘I Am Heath Ledger’, ‘Mystify’ benefits from the large amount of footage filmed by its subject over his life. Watching the same footage that Hutchence himself would have seen creates a genuine sense of connection with him, one that no amount of interview audio can replicate. In short, the access that the doco has to this footage, not to mention the terrific recordings taken of a number of the band’s shows to crowds both large and small, is the what ultimately makes it a cut above the TV miniseries, ‘Never Tear Us Apart’.

Only receiving a limited release in Australian cinemas, ‘Mystify: Michael Hutchence’ knows its limited audience and gives them exactly what they want. This is a loving tribute to the INXS front man that emphasises his artistic and performative genius, allowing fans to remember him as the rock god that became in our shared cultural memory. What it lacks in subtlety or insight, it makes up for in pure homage, boosted by its fairly thorough access to contemporaneous footage and an array of important people in Hutchence’s life.

Callum Ryan is an associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film & Broadcasting.